Final Piece
by Jezzabelle
Summary: Nobody ever said marriage would be easy. Well, some people might have, but they're obviously not to be trusted. Between borderline alcoholism, explosive domestics and incessant glaring, will Severus and Raphaela be able to handle each other's presence?
1. Raphaela Who?

So I know I said that I was going to put Raphaela on a break for a while because I was out of ideas for her. Well, that's still true, I haven't got any story ideas or plot points, but I missed writing her. So without further ado, here comes a story that will probably go nowhere at all. And by the way, this is my final Raphaela story. Ever. No more. So I'm going to exhaust every single plot point and storyline I've ever casually thought of in this one piece. So it's probably going to be long as all hell. Just a little warning for y'all.

Oh, right, and in case you're new to this series, I'm trying to write this as a fairly stand-alone piece, but I've actually done two other Raphaela/Severus stories and a little fluffy oneshot. So if you dig this, y'know, check out the other ones. If you want. I'm not going to put a hit out on you if you don't. But I might.

I thought that for a bit of a switcheroo I'd write this first chapter from a different point of view. Might be interesting.

* * *

**Chapter One: Raphaela Who?**

It wasn't as though I were _missing_ her. The very notion of such a thing was laughable. It was just quiet. I was in my dungeon quarters, in a green velvet armchair in front of the fire. I was… bored. It was the summer holidays. There wasn't any class. The thought of working on the curriculum was so repulsive to me at that moment that I'd have preferred to do nothing at all. But it was still too silent. Merlin, I'd have even loved for one of those irritating students to have been running past my door shouting bloody murder. What was wrong with me?

I used to love my silence, my solitude. I'd spent most of my life that way, it was _natural_. Normal. Now that bloody girl had ruined me. She'd spent the last year of my life chattering in my ear like a particularly annoying monkey, without one scrap of relevant or intelligent conversation. She'd always be musing about such banal topics as the benefits of aqua over teal, or if people would notice if she went another day without washing her hair. Then she'd make me inspect her hair at various distances, or judge which was the better shoe, out of the aqua vinyl peep-toe heels or the teal suede ankle boots. (_And obviously the answer was the peep-toes, Severus, don't you know anything?_) Sweet Merlin's beard, before I met her I only knew one classification of shoe, and that was shoe. She had introduced strange and frightening concepts to me and now I was _missing_ her?

No, of course I wasn't. She could stay gone forever, for all I cared. Well, not forever. Maybe just a few extra months. Or weeks. Damn her! Two months. I'd been alone for most of my adult life, and now I couldn't handle two months without her? Of course, I couldn't blame her for going. Her parents had still been supremely annoyed with her for neglecting to tell them of me until after we were engaged. She'd had to go. After a year spent at a boarding school with few visits, they were feeling the bite of her independence, and she was feeling the bite of their nagging. But she was twenty-eight years old, for Merlin's sake. She shouldn't still have to spend her summers at her parents' house in London. Of course, she'd gone for her cousin's wedding, but that was a mere tool her parents used to get her there. I was invited by proxy, but I'd decided against going. I could tell her father still disliked me. He made no attempts to hide it. Perhaps it was that he was only around fifteen years older than me. Perhaps it was that Raphaela had once been a student of mine. Or perhaps it was simple fatherly dislike. Her mother was nice to a fault, of course, but I wasn't sure if I could have handled two months of her constantly asking why Raphaela wasn't… with child.

Now, I was somewhat regretting my decision. At that moment, I felt like I'd withstand two hundred months of her mother's lewd suggestions and her father's stony glares if it meant I could spend that time with Raphaela.

Sweet Merlin, what had that girl _done_ to me?

A loud crashing noise and several shouted swears wafted gently through the door, and I started. Some sort of commotion was taking place in the corridor. Raphaela? No, it couldn't have been. She wasn't due back for another week, on August thirty-first. The sound of footsteps tapping on the stone floor came closer and closer, and I began to contemplate going out there to inspect what was going on. Then, the footsteps stopped, and I saw the door handle turn. Raphaela! A feeling like a small explosion took place somewhere below my ribcage, and it made my stomach turn.

"Raphaela?" I called out involuntarily, then my searching gaze turned to a steely glare as a child – no more than ten or eleven – came through my door. She had long, light brown plaits, and her features were oddly angular. There was something very familiar about her large, bright eyes though. "Who are you?" I asked sharply. "What makes you think you can enter my private quarters without knocking? Twenty points from – what house are you in?"

The girl squeaked. "Severus?" she said eventually.

"Who are you?"

"Um…"

A larger form almost bowled her over as she tripped into the room. "Bloody hell Ana, I told you not to let him frighten you. He's more scared of you than you are of him."

It was her! Her black hair had grown somewhat since she'd departed, now reaching her collarbone, and she was hopping on one foot, but that didn't stop me from sweeping forward and taking her in my arms. It was entirely uncharacteristic of me, but I couldn't very well help myself. She'd been gone for almost two months, after all. She seemed just as happy to see me though, putting her arms around my neck in a chokingly tight hold.

"I thought you weren't due back for another week?" I asked, once she'd let go and I'd gotten my breath back.

"Well, maybe I missed you," she said, looking up at me with a smile so wide it might've split her cheeks. "Did you miss me?"

I smirked. "Hardly."


	2. Ana Who?

Okay, now it's back to the perspective you know and love. Well, the one I know and love, anyway. Oh, and thanks to those who reviewed the first chapter. It actually made me get all giggly and super-excited like a child on crack. How do I know what a child on crack is like? I don't.

**Chapter Two: Ana who?**

Severus was going to be _so_ surprised. I was meant to stay with my parents until the thirty-first, but I'd eventually worn them down and they'd given me leave to go back to Hogwarts early. I mean, I could've gone anyway if I'd really wanted; it wasn't as though I were under house arrest or anything. But since I was bringing Ana back with me, I figured I shouldn't add 'kidnapping' to my long, long list of criminal misdeeds. Well, that part was a bit of a lie. I didn't have any criminal misdeeds, actually. Well, there was that one time, from when I was nineteen and I got so drunk that I climbed to the top of the statue of St. Ignatius in the park near London, sat on his shoulders, and sang filthy sailors' songs. It was okay though, since I'd fallen down and dislocated my shoulder, the policeman who was going to arrest me let me off with a warning out of pity. That shouldn't really count, though.

Anyway, back to the present, I was going to surprise Severus with my early arrival. Not sure how he'd handle Ana being around, though. It wasn't like I particularly enjoyed the kid's company, but she was due to begin school that year anyway, and since her mother had gone off on her honeymoon, it was just more convenient for everyone if she came back to Hogwarts with me. At least she was lugging her own trunk, because with a huge suitcase and an oversized handbag, I was having my own baggage issues.

"Why are we going to the basement?" she asked timidly as she followed me down flights of stairs.

"Dungeons, Ana, in Hogwarts it's called the dungeons," I corrected, as the final stair was conquered and the floor was fairly flat – good for suitcases with rolly-wheels.

"Oh," she said, hurrying to keep up. "Why are we going to the dungeons?"

"Because that's where I stay."

"Where do I stay?"

"No idea. I'll have to talk to McGonagall. But I want to see Severus first."

"Uncle Martin said Severus was a surly old bat who has no business with you," Ana said matter-of-factly. I turned to stare at her, but forgot that there was another couple of stairs before the doorway to Severus' quarters. My foot stepped on air rather than solid ground and I stumbled, falling to the ground. My face hit the flagstones and my suitcase tipped onto my shin, causing me to cry out and swear like a drunken sailor. I glared at Ana.

"My father doesn't know shit about Severus. Don't listen to him," I said eventually, rubbing my aching shin.

"Mum said that she'd hex you if you swore in front of me."

"Don't tell her then."

"She told me to tell her."

"So don't tell her you're not telling her."

"That's lying."

"Bloody hell, Ana. Just go… look, over there, that door with the plaque on it. Go into that room and get Severus, get him to come help me with my stuff. And don't turn into a flobberworm if he puts the glare on you, he does that to everyone." My shin was still aching viciously and it was making my eyes water, but thankfully Ana followed my instructions and walked swiftly over to the door. I saw her open it apprehensively and step inside, and heard a sharp voice coming out from the room. _Severus!_ I'd dreamt about him every night and thought about him every day since I'd left, but nothing could compare to the real thing. I stood up, though my shin was still painful enough to make me whimper, and hopped over to the doorway, almost crushing Ana as I staggered into the room. I muttered a quick reprimand to Ana for her weakness, then my ribs were nearly crushed by a large black mass. After ascertaining that it was just Severus and not a giant bear, I wrestled my arms out of his vice-like grip and hugged him around the neck so tightly I might've lodged a few vertebrae in his windpipe. Eventually I felt his grip loosen, so I let go of his neck and amused myself by watching him try to breathe again.

"I thought you weren't due back for another week?" he asked, overdoing the nonchalant act. Honestly, I could see right through him sometimes. I could barely think of that, though. I just loved to look at him, after being separated for so long. I was so incredibly ecstatic that I was back.

"Well, maybe I missed you," I said cheerfully. "Did you miss me?"

He grimaced and turned slightly. "Hardly." What an awful liar. "Who's this?"

"Oh… actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about her, ever since… ever since we became involved, actually." I wondered if he'd buy it. He looked bewildered and suspicious. "Maybe you'd better sit down." Ana looked just as bewildered, but Severus complied and swept over to one of the green armchairs that sat before the fire. I sat in another, and motioned for Ana to take a third. "The truth is… she's my daughter. She's been with her father for the past eleven years, but now that it's time for her to start Hogwarts she's under my care. I'm sorry I kept this from you all this time." Severus still looked bewildered, and a little expression of shock was creeping into his face.

"Raphie!" Ana cried indignantly, and I cracked up.

"You should see your _face!_" I cried, pointing at Severus. "Ha, Merlin, no, she's just my cousin's kid. I'm just doing her mum a favour by bringing her back with me."

"That's not funny, Raphaela," Severus said, now just glaring.

"You totally believed me," I said, still giggling. "_I_ think it's funny."

"Well, I don't," he said, standing up and sweeping over to one of the faux windows. "I think it's a ridiculous, feeble joke."

"I don't think it's funny either," Ana said, crossing her arms. "You're _not_ my mother."

"Duh, that was the joke, genius," I said, rolling my eyes. Fine, so nobody was going to side with me over my totally great joke. I didn't care. I still thought it was funny.

-----

A/N

1. As far as I know, St. Ignatius is not a real saint. I made him up. But if anyone is a saint-spert (saint and expert put together, oh snap) then let me know one way or another.

2. Yes, Raphaela has a terrible case of 'not knowing how to act around children'. Stemming, most likely, from her chronic 'not knowing how to act around anyone'.


	3. To Be Sure

So thanks to snapeisalive, I found out St. Ignatius IS real. Sweet! So I Wikipedia'd him and apparently there's three, but my favourite is St. Ignatius of Antioch, even though he's also known as Theophorus. The picture of him is a dude with FUCKING LIONS just CRAWLING THE FUCK OVER HIM. LIONS. That guy is chilling with lions and he just does not give a fuck. I want to party with that guy. I'd definitely party with a statue of him. Holy crap, I just looked at that picture again. LIONS! And I think they're trying to maul him, but he STILL DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK.

LIONS!

**Chapter Three: To Be Sure**

I knocked three times on the griffin door-knocker, and McGonagall's voice called out for me to enter. I did so, bringing Ana inside with me. McGonagall looked over her glasses at the kid, and I suddenly felt quite sheepish for bringing her with me without owling first.

"Uh… hey Minerva. So this is Ana, and she's my cousin's kid, and since she's starting this year anyway I figured it'd be cool if she just stayed here until term started. Is that cool? 'Cause her mum's on her honeymoon." I fidgeted with the drawstring on the hood of my jacket for a bit, while McGonagall continued to observe Ana.

"Anastasia Vialle?" she asked eventually. Ana and I nodded in unison. "Yes, I saw your name on the list and wondered if you were related. I suppose it is not completely unreasonable for you to stay here until term begins. You will have to be sorted with the rest of the first-years, though."

Ana nodded vigorously. "Where does she stay 'til then?" I asked, somewhat fearing the answer. I sure as hell didn't want her cramping my style, not when I had two months worth of… you know… to catch up on with Severus.

"Well, the dormitories are out of the question, of course," McGonagall began.

"Why? I'm sure they're okay. And she can just like, move when she gets sorted."

"I'm afraid any partiality towards any one house will sway the sorting hat's decision. The hat's choices are made from qualities and meaningful decisions, not room preferences. Besides, she cannot be unattended in the castle. She is barely eleven." McGonagall was now peering over her glasses at me, and I didn't like the way she was looking right into me. It seemed she'd inherited a bit of Dumbledore's x-ray vision after all. "No, I think the only answer is to have her stay with you."

"There's no room," I said quickly. McGonagall laughed slightly.

"I'll send the order to the house-elves to make up the classroom next to Severus' quarters in a more… bedroomy style. It is only temporary, after all." Damn that McGonagall. She _knew_ why I wanted Ana far away from me and Severus, and I was pretty sure that it was grossing her out enough that she wanted to make sure it never happened. Bloody headmasters, they're all practically legilimens.

"Yes, Headmistress," I said, tapping Ana on the shoulder as I stood up. She followed me out, down the stairs and fell into step beside me as we walked back towards the dungeons. "I don't want to be bothered, okay?" I looked down at her, and felt somewhat bad. She was looking clearly terrified of her first year at Hogwarts. "Hey Ana, turn that frown upside down." She glared at me. "Trust me. Whatever house you get into, you'll be great friends with whoever's there. It gets pretty tight, sharing a dorm with the same four people for seven years. And if anyone bothers you, I can do a pretty good Jelly-legs hex that'll make them think twice before doing it again."

"Thanks Raphie," Ana said quietly. "I'll just miss home."

"That's what the owlery's for," I muttered. "And breaks. But I'll be here, and I'm family."

"Not really," Ana said as we turned a corner and started going down a long flight of stairs. "Aunt Carol said that you went straight from Hogwarts to living alone and never visiting, now you're living at Hogwarts and never visiting."

"Shit, Ana, I was still there sometimes," I said. This kid was annoying the hell out of me. "Whatever though. Look, we're at Severus' place now. Next door on your left, just wait there for the house-elves and tell them what to do once they're there." I waited in the hall just long enough to make sure Ana went into the right room, then I went into Severus' room. He was still standing by the faux window, but turned and half-smiled when I entered the room. It might have been insensitive of me, but I kind of wished he wouldn't smile. It was really, really creepy. Though I was pretty sure that preferring your husband to be unhappy just because it looks better is fundamentally wrong on so many levels.

"Hey stupid-face," I said, kicking my shoes off and jumping onto the bed. I'd missed the bed most of all while I was gone, sleeping in my old bed at my parents' house wasn't the same, and I could never sleep properly there. "What's on your mind?"

"I was just contemplating the child."

"Ana?"

"No, the other child," he muttered dryly. "How many children did you bring with you?"

I glared. "What are you thinking regarding Ana?"

"She looks like you."

"Not really," I protested dully. I stretched out on my back on the bed, my forearms crossed under my head. "Even if she did, we're so different. She's scared of her own shadow."

"And you are scared only of being unable to irritate me." Severus retorted, crossing the room to sit on the bed by me. I screwed up my nose at him and laughed slightly.

"You're right. Imagine if I couldn't annoy you anymore." I removed one arm from under my head and began to poke him repeatedly in the ribs. "Am I doing it? Am I annoying you? Is this annoying?"

"Yes!" he cried, standing up and glaring at me. "You are fully aware of how annoying that is. Merlin, Raphaela, to think only an hour ago I actually looked forward to your return."

"Aww, you did? That's so sweet. Now come back so I can poke you more. I can't exactly do it from here."

"No."

"You're _so_ inconsiderate." I grinned broadly at him and he glared back, clearly not thinking I was funny. What was with him today? I mean, he wasn't usually a barrel of laughs, but… well, there was no but. He was a Serious Susan all the time. It was a bit tedious, to tell the truth. "Jeez, Susan, lighten up," I said, and he furrowed his eyebrows at me.

"What did you call me?"

"Nothing," I said, giggling and dragging my suitcase over. I opened it up and began to toss clothes in the laundry basket. "Nothing at all."

"You know what my name is, Raphaela," he continued. He walked around the bed and stared at me, though I didn't even acknowledge his presence. I just continued to sort my clothes, every so often throwing things in the basket. "Why must you insist upon being so irritating? I know you can be pleasant, I've seen it."

"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," I said dully, still sorting. When he didn't move from his position, I decided I had to take drastic action. I threw a shoe at him. It hit him on the leg and fell to the floor, and he glared even more fiercely.

"What on earth did you do that for?"

"You were in the way of the closet."

"The closet is on the other side of the room."

"There was going to be a layover in bathroom."

This time, he couldn't help it, and he let out a snort of laughter. "You're mad," he said, walking over to sit by me. "Entirely."

"That's why you love me," I said, trying to smile innocently. He didn't reply. He just continued to watch me empty my suitcase.

* * *

A/N: SERIOUSLY! LIONS! FUCK!


	4. Morning People

Super thanks to the reviewers, it makes my day, really. If you haven't yet, be sure to clicky clicky down at the bottom and let me know what you think.

**Chapter Four: Morning People**

A short series of quick taps broke my dream. I groaned and sighed at the same time (grighed? Soaned? Both sound very wrong) and rolled over onto my stomach, pulling the blanket up by my ears. It was so warm under there, and every limb in my body was so relaxed and heavy. My thoughts swam into each other and soon George the talking kitty was telling me that he wasn't going to buy a copy of the book I'd written, but he was sure it was very good. I smiled down at George and opened my mouth to reply –

Tap tap tap tap tap. "That's okay George, I know you've got stuff to do," slipped blearily out of my mouth as I pushed myself up to a kneeling position, blankets falling around me. Damn it, I was _cold_. But I suppose that's what you get for discarding the blankets when you're only wearing your underpants. I grabbed a tank top from where it was draped over the back of a chair and pulled it down over my torso before plodding to the door, unwilling to open my eyes very wide. I yanked the door open, almost falling over with its momentum, only to see Ana standing there, hand poised by the door, ready to knock a third time.

"What is it?" I said, trying and failing to hide my irritation.

"Is it breakfast time? I don't have a clock and I can't sleep and I -"

"Anaaaaaaa," I whined, putting a hand to my forehead. "It's like, negative four million o'clock in the stupid morning."

"It's five forty-seven," came a loud, clear voice from the bed. I spun around and saw Severus lying perfectly rigid, eyes open but unmoving. I would have thought he were dead if I hadn't just heard his voice. "Breakfast in the Great Hall begins at six."

"No. It is not breakfast time. Just go back to bed." I wanted desperately to crawl back under the blankets with Severus and get a few more hours of sleep, but I had to get rid of the kid first.

"But I can't sleep," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Try," I said, and I shut the door in her face. I felt bad, ignoring her like that, but I was _tired_. "Bloody hell," I said, wandering back over to the bed and crawling over the top of Severus to slip into bed next to him. "I'll be glad to see the arse-end of this week."

"The what?" Severus had his eyes closed again, and mine were drooping, but he still sounded nearly as alert as ever.

"Sorry…" I muttered. "Lucindy was staying with me for a while… she's…"

"I know full well what _she's_ like," Severus said, but I barely heard it. "You'd better keep your mouth in check when the students come back, or you'll hear from some very displeased parents."

"But George," I muttered as everything went fuzzy. "It's surely no business of yours how often I take my baths…"

It seemed like no time at all passed before Severus was nudging me awake. "Who's George?" he asked, trying and failing to look nonchalant. I looked at him through bleary, half-closed eyes and he sighed and stood up. "Should have known better than to try and get words out of you before nine."

"Oh you're just a… a…" I felt myself drifting off again, my mouth hanging agape as I rested my head against the pillows.

"Don't go back to sleep, Raphaela," Severus said sharply, making my eyes snap open and my mouth snap shut. I was entirely sure that my whole droopy-eyed, slack-jawed sleeping habits were extremely attractive to all who witnessed it. "Ana will be waiting." He walked over to the closet and rifled through it, throwing a shirt at me.

"Don't try to help with my clothes, Severus, you have no taste at all." I stretched, yawning, and swung my legs out from under the blankets and looked at the top he'd picked out. Plain black tank top. How original. A skirt hit me in the side of the face and I stumbled a bit to the right. "You arse, I wasn't expecting that."

"Who's George?" he repeated, crossing his arms in the closet.

"Talking kitty," I muttered.

"Oh, he has a name now?"

"Yeah. He told me it was George the night of my cousin's wedding. Might have just been that waiter though, I think he _was_ saying something to me as I fell asleep on his burly man-chest."

"Raphaela," he said dangerously. "That is the opposite of funny."

"You're no fun," I said, poking out my tongue. Why didn't anyone appreciate my jokes? They took at least four seconds to think up. Whatever though. At least I appreciated my own humour, and that was the most important thing. "Do you ever wish that we were seventeen?"

"Since you were four when I was seventeen, no, no I do not," Severus replied from the bathroom.

"I mean both of us," I called out, pulling on the skirt Severus had picked out before zipping it up at the side. "Do you think we'd have lain on the grass and gazed into each others eyes and said we'd be together forever?"

"That is an entirely disgusting notion, Raphaela, and I strongly advise you to disabuse yourself of it. Besides, I highly doubt seventeen-year-old you would have even deigned to give seventeen-year-old me the time of day."

"There you go, getting all inferiority complex again," I called in the direction of the bathroom, where I heard the shower running. I pulled off the top I'd just been sleeping in and put on the clean one before finding a very warm jacket to remove my chills. "I'm sure seventeen-year-old me would have been fawning all over you just like twenty-eight year old me is doing now." I wandered over to the bathroom and leant against the door frame.

"Well I'm glad seventeen-year-old you _didn't_ fawn all over me, since I was your _teacher_, and it would have been incredibly worrying," he replied, making me snort with laughter.

"Oh, I'm sure I was secretly fawning, back when I was a young'un," I muttered as he utilised about six different towels at once. Odd. Efficient, though. Perhaps he was part German. That's what Germans are like, right? Efficient? Or was it genocidal? Or is that racial stereotyping?

"You were?" he said in mild interest, brushing past me to find one of his stupid robes to wear.

"I don't _know_, I don't remember. I was legal, do you really think I have any _memory_ of seventh year?"

"Are you suggesting that you were intoxicated the entire year?"

"I might be."

"Mad," he muttered. "Entirely mad."

"That's me," I said, throwing my arms around him and giggling as he tensed up uncomfortably. "But you love it."

"Indeed."


	5. First

I wrote the bulk of this chapter over a few English classes when I was a bit drunk. It's the only productive thing that gets done in them anyway. :]

**Chapter Five: First**

The week before school started was entirely dull, so dull in fact that it doesn't bear even repeating. I was annoying, Severus was terse, it was like I'd never left. At any rate, I was late. It was 8.58 exactly, the flickering light from the clock told me that. I was so exhausted, I would've given both my arms to have been able to let my eyes droop closed and just sleep for the next hundred years. Severus had woken me at six, of course, but he just intuitively knew that I needed more sleep, and left me alone. We were just so connected on a deep, psychic level like that. Of course, by "intuitively knew", I mean I kicked him in the shin and yelled things at him that would've made a fishwife blush, but the sentiment was still there. Now, at 8.59, he was standing over me, fully dressed, with a repulsively smug look on his face. I could tell exactly what he was thinking – a big fat "I told you so."

"What did I tell you, Raphaela?" he said, arms crossed over his chest. "First day of classes. The students are not going to respect and obey a tardy instructor."

"Students can shutup," I replied, swinging my legs out from under the covers and hurriedly pulling on a pair of faded, ripped jeans that had been lying on the floor. They smelled a bit like casserole, which was odd. "Look, ready to go, and with four seconds to spare." Sure, so I was just wearing a white tank top with no bra, but I figured that these kids were like, what, ten or something, they wouldn't know the difference. And if they did, so what? I'd do better tomorrow. "Let's go, co-professor."

By the time we got to the classroom, students were milling around the doorway. "Whoever goes and gets me a croissant gets like, ten points or something." One small boy ran off towards the stairs, and I smiled. I unlocked the door and let the students in, but when I got to the desk at the front of the class, Severus glared at me. "What? I was hungry."

"You wouldn't be if you'd gotten up when I woke you and gone to breakfast with me," he said. "Now, the students will not respect you."

"You could have brought me back something," I retorted. Way to be inconsiderate, Severus." He didn't answer. He just did his signature move, standing completely still and glaring icily at me. Well, whatever. If he wasn't going to agree with me (and he never did, I don't know why I ever bothered arguing wit him) then I'd just have to ignore him.

That was our problem, I thought as I flipped the textbook open to today's work. We never agreed about anything. I was just about to launch into the first-years' speech when the door banged open and the boy came in suddenly with my croissant, panting and very red in the face. The heads of the entire class turned as one like a school of fish, and I giggled behind my hand before clapping my hands together once and holding them up. The boy tossed the croissant and I caught it with both hands – I was far too clumsy to attempt a one-hander. "Ten points to, I dunno, whatever house you're in," I said, and the boy smiled.

"Ravenclaw," he said, and I nodded. I took a bite out of my croissant and smiled at Severus, a closed-mouth smile out of necessity since I didn't think a visible mouthful of breakfast pastry would be very attractive. It didn't matter, he simply sighed, turned away, and saved me from winging a speech by recycling the one he'd used every stupid year since Merlin knew how long.

"How long have you been saying that?" I asked, and he stopped talking abruptly and turned to glare at me.

"Approximately four seconds," he said coldly. "Interrupt me again and you'll find yourself short a limb." He started talking again and I realised he hadn't really answered me.

"No, I mean, like, how many years have you recycled that old speech," I piped up.

This time he didn't even turn to look at me. "Raphaela, I will _end_ you."

"I was just asking a _question_," I muttered, pouting. "Bloody rude, if you ask me."

"Nobody did," he said, still facing away from me. Well! If he wasn't going to be nice, neither was I. Only problem was, I couldn't really think of anything super-mean to do to him. Darn my uncreativeness, darn it to heck! Heheh. Merlin, this croissant's good. It was too bad I hadn't gotten two, though I probably could have eaten about six million of them. I wonder what six million croissants would look like? I suppose it's one of those things that you can't really visualise because it's so huge. It would probably fill the entire classroom. What an awesome classroom that would be. Severus was still on his stupid first-years speech but I was barely listening, the words seemed to run over me without bothering to put themselves into my head. Silly words. "I am Professor Snape, and my inept colleague here is Professor Vialle. Questions should be directed at her." Oh, now that was a low blow. He should have known that I couldn't deal with children and their incessant questioning this early in the morning. Then again, he probably did. It was weird to be referred to as 'Professor Vialle', though. Like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. I recognised that they were words and they went together, but the concept was quite alien to me. "Instructions," Severus waved his wand and words appeared on the blackboard behind him, quite the nifty trick. "Are on the board." Wait, nifty? Who says that? Had I suddenly turned seventy and started using words like nifty and… horror of horrors, _snazzy?_ "Ingredients are in the store cupboard. Begin."

"Have I ever said snazzy?" I asked Severus desperately, and my look of alarm must have disturbed him for he raised an eyebrow disdainfully.

"Not that I am aware of," he replied, swishing around the desk to sit down on the chair behind it. "Get off the desk, you look ridiculous."

"No, _you_ look ridiculous," I shot back, though I complied with his demands and slid off to a standing position. Even though I do not negotiate with terrorists. Could caving be construed as negotiating? Probably not. Could Severus be construed as a terrorist? Well, probably, actually. He did aim to terrorise. Oh, him and his fear-mongering ways.


	6. Visitations

Ugh, my life is like, a complete mess right now. But, y'know, some nice reviews might make me feel better... I'm just sayin'. WINK WINK. WINK.

**Chapter Six: Visitations**

That first day almost flew by, really, and it seemed like no time before I was back in Severus' quarters, flopping around and generally being an annoyance. It was only seven, too. What was I going to _do_ for the rest of the evening? I really needed to get a hobby. My entire life revolved around classes or whatever Severus was doing, and those two things frequently intersected. What had I done before I started teaching? Well, I'd just gone out with my friends most of the time. But that wasn't really as possible now that I was living at Hogwarts. I'd barely seen anyone except Lucindy when I was staying with my parents over summer, and we'd gone out, but it wasn't really the same as getting a big group together like we used to. I missed my old friends.

An odd sound came to me from the direction of the corridor, which broke me out of my reverie. It sounded like a group of particularly boisterous students, but that was odd, since classes were over and there was no reason for anyone to be down in the dungeons. I sat up and considered briefly going out to investigate, but at that moment the door burst open and the first thing I saw was a flash of blonde hair as I was knocked back onto the bed with a large mass crushing me. In a moment, I realised that Lucindy had tackled me onto the bed and I hugged her back, laughing through the mouthful of hair I'd just received. After breaking the rib-crushing bear hug she'd inflicted, I looked around and realised that it wasn't just Lucindy who'd come to visit. Four other people stood in the room, grinning broadly. There was Kirk, my second-best friend from my Hogwarts days. He was standing there, arms folded, looking incredibly amused. His brown hair had grown slightly since my wedding and came down to his ears in layered waves, which looked as nice as it did completely girly. Andy and Lacy, who'd spent practically all seven years of school together, were hand-in-hand as usual and looking at me from their sphere of beatific coupleship that they'd always smugly held. Damn them. My old workmate from the bookshop, Pete, was there too, and he looked like he was barely stopping himself from running around the room to explore everything.

"Merlin, you guys, what are you doing here?" I asked, once I'd taken mental stock of everyone. I put a hand to my forehead and pushed my hair back to settle it, since I suspected that Lucindy's tackle had rendered my hair monstrous. I hadn't even seen any of them since the wedding, save Lucindy, and there was no big event that I knew of that would bring them all together at Hogwarts.

"Well, we were talking, right?" Lucindy started. "And we decided that this here marriage of yours is just no good for you. You're spending all your time here instead of out with us, where it's _awesomer_."

It was incredibly odd that she was mirroring what I'd been thinking just moments previously, but I suspected that when you were best friends with somebody for nearly twenty years of your life, these kinds of things just happened like that. Like the time when I was eighteen and I fell off the balcony outside our place, she was outside in about four nanoseconds, before I even had time to yell about my Intense Pain and Unholy Suffering. Then again, what was she getting at with her remarks, anyway? Maybe she was suggesting I get a divorce. Me, Raphaela Vialle, _divorcee_? It had a certain ring to it, I admit, but it was still not going to happen. Divorcee by twenty-eight, I think not. Oh, and there was that love thing, too. I kind of still wanted to be married to Severus?

"Oh, Merlin, she's gone all glazed-over again," Kirk said, to laughs from the others. I couldn't believe that my little tangents were that noticeable, really. It must have just been a coincidence that he _guessed_ that I was thinking about something else while I was actually thinking about something else. "What's on your mind, Raphie?"

"I was just _wondering_," I said, trying to make myself sound intimidating. I probably failed. "What you were _suggesting_ regarding my marriage. Do you want me to divorce him or something?" I crossed my arms and tried to glare at each and every one of them, as if to challenge them to try and make me.

Andy laughed. "Yeah, we're really into the idea of separating you from the guy you love. _Not!_" he said. Wow, he really hadn't stopped using early nineties catch-phrases in daily conversation. I wondered momentarily whether Lacy ever got annoyed by it, before remembering that they were the Annoyingly Perfect Couple. She probably never got annoyed by anything he did, even though he did stuff like quoting Wayne's World non-stop and keeping that weird haircut. I know I'd get annoyed by it.

"We're visiting to make you fun again!" Lacy said cheerily, bouncing up and down on her heels in a motion that somehow didn't affect the hand welded to Andy's.

"Pete, just look," I said eventually. He was still glancing at everything around the room and at my consent he took off, opening bottles and turning over papers in his vigour to inspect everything. "And Lacy, I'll have you know that I never ceased fun. Fun is my middle name. I am Raphaela Fun Vialle."

"Oh, really?" Kirk said, grinning. "Then you won't mind proving it?"

"Tonight," Lucindy said dramatically. "London. _Out_."

"Out?!" I said, a grin spreading across my face. "Oh-Merlin-I-haven't-been-out-in-ages-this-is-going-to-be-so-fun-what-am-I-going-to-_wear?_" I'd progressed to full-on squealing and bouncing by that stage, and Lucindy was giggling and smiling so widely it showed practically all her teeth. And that was far too many teeth to be seeing. Pete had progressed to rummaging through the closet, and he threw out a dress. "Thanks Pete," I laughed, still jittery and excited. I hadn't been this excited to go out in a long time, not since I became of age. Tonight was going to be _awesome_.


	7. Drink, Drink, Dance, Dance, Repeat

Oooh, foreshadowing. Will these events set the scene for later plot points? LET'S READ ON. (Hint: yes, yes they will.)

**Chapter Seven: Drink, Drink, Dance, Dance, Repeat**

It was the shoes that really made the outfit. Sure, the navy satiny dress was _adorable_, but it wouldn't have been anything without the shiny black Mary-Janes that set it off. My feet were going to hurt in the morning, that much was certain, but it didn't matter. How many chances did I get to wear cute shoes these days anyway? None, that's how many. Damn Hogwarts and its uneven floors unsuited to stilettos. Anyway, the point was that I was looking excellent for my first time out in over a stinking year, and I was revelling in it. Lacy and Lucindy had on _their_ pretty dresses, Kirk, Andy and Pete had done whatever it is that guys do to get ready to go out, and the sun was just setting. It was perfect. 'Was' being the operative word, broken as always by Severus.

He strolled in from whatever the hell it was that he'd been doing and froze somewhat at the sight of five people standing where there would normally only be one. He looked me up and down, raised his eyebrows in an amused, disparaging sort of way, and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out Pete had crossed the room to address him.

"Hey Professor!" he said, a huge grin on his face. While the rest of us were around twenty-eight or so, Pete was barely twenty-two and creeped me out by referring to my husband like he was still his teacher. "How're you doing? Remember me? From Potions class? Ahhh, you don't remember. That's cool. What's happening?" He said all of this quite rapidly and Severus looked at him blankly for a moment before I rushed forward and took him by the shoulder.

"This is Pete, I worked with him at the bookshop. Over there are Andy, Lacy, and Kirk, and you've already met Lucindy. These guys were all at the wedding, remember?" He still looked somewhat like a deer in the headlights but seemed to compose himself into his ordinary bat-like demeanour at the sight of Lucindy. Just because she was a little… well, unsavoury for some tastes, didn't mean they had to be sworn enemies. Damn that Severus and his high standards for the people I associated with. He should have known what he was getting into though, bedding the kind of girl who'll get drunk and sing filthy sailor's songs until four in the morning.

"Lovely," he said eventually. "I assume you're going somewhere?"

"Out," I said, kissing him on the cheek before grabbing my bag. "Don't wait up," I called as we left the room. I poked my head back in briefly. "Actually do, you know how booze gets me." He looked mortified to have me saying that in front of my friends, but I couldn't revel in his awkwardness forever, as Lucindy yanked me down the corridor and we made our way to London.

"And so then, then I said," Lacy said after the first few shots, her face contorted with mirth. "Then I said to her that it didn't even matter, because _Kirk_ doesn't date ugly girls!" The table erupted with laughter, from me especially. I'd forgotten the feeling of being out with my friends, which melded very nicely with the feeling of being slightly tipsy. Lacy had always been an incredible lightweight, stemming perhaps from the fact that she was thin. Very thin. And wiry, like a fairy. Heheh. One time she'd gone as a fairy to a Halloween party. That was… that was good.

"I can't believe you actually said that!" Lucindy cried, pushing one side of her hair back and taking a drink of her beer simultaneously. Multitasking. Must look into that. Lacy grinned.

"I was… I was _pretty_ pissed," she admitted, stirring her bright green cocktail. We were in a fairly casual pub – none of us really liked loud bars or clubs until we got past about a six or seven out of ten on the drunkenness scale, a symptom of the 'being over the age of twenty' disease. It was a pretty sweet disease to be havin', even if it made a couple of things seem less fun. Whatever though. There was an unfinished pint in front of me and _that was not the way things were supposed to happen_,_ damn it_. It was half-empty so I downed it in one and grinned.

"Who wants shots?!" I said loudly, and all four of them put up their hands. I snorted and meandered over to the bar, which, incidentally, happened to be one of the last properly clear memories I had. The rest of the time spent at the bar was ever so slightly blurred, a mess of my old friends informing me of what exactly they'd been doing for the past year since I hadn't been there to experience it. Note to self: don't ever go a year without seeing your friends again. It is a bloody stupid thing to do.

Then, there came the familiar club feeling. Dance, dance, drink, guy, oh, he's not cute at all, never mind, dance, dance, drink, drink, repeat. Change of location, concentrate _every single molecule of your being_ into walking in a straight line so the bouncers will let you in. One song melted into another and before I knew it I was clutching the staircase railing with one hand, holding my shoes with the other hand, and trying not to freeze my toes off down in the frigid Hogwarts dungeons. I was bent over watching my feet move, one in front of the other, in a desperate attempt not to trip over and crack my skull open. Skull-pen. Heheh. What? Oh, my toes were painted pretty colours. Dark blue. Very… pretty. They blurred with the colour of my skin and I was seeing double, something I couldn't remedy by concentrating. I had to squeeze one eye shut like a maniac, or a pirate, just so that there was one version of everything.

There wasn't any railing to hold onto once the staircase ended, so I drifted more towards the middle of the corridor and just concentrated on keeping myself mostly upright and not dropping my shoes. I staggered ever closer to the warm bed I'd been thinking about since I left the club with Lucindy and Kirk and felt the freezing London air cling to my bare arms and legs. It sustained me when all I wanted to do was to lie down in the middle of that cold corridor and… just lie down. Oh, why hadn't I gotten pizza at that 24-hour place? It was only, like, _one block_ out of my way anyway, and if I'd… um, gone to there, I would have _pizza_ now and I wouldn't be so agitated about my _lack_. Heh. Lack. Wait, that wasn't a funny word.

A glimmer of silver on the plaque for the door caught my eye and I barrelled into it, forgetting momentarily the wonderful invention of doorknobs. My head swam for a moment but the pain was dull and forgettable, and my hand flailed until it hit something. I grabbed the doorknob and turned, but unfortunately I was still leaning wholly on the door and I fell into the room, my shoes flying out of my hand and careening under the bed, where I was sure to forget them. My elbows were aching from the fall, but I kept my swearing to a minimum as I leopard-crawled over to the ajar door and hit it until it swung shut. I had all the grace in the world.


	8. Entry

This chapter's a teeny tiny bit shorter, but I like it. It's a little bit of funsies before Shit Gets Real. (Bam.)

**Chapter Eight: Entry**

It was difficult, but I managed to get onto my feet again and stand up, though I may have been swaying slightly. My head was still swimming in something fizzy, which in turn made me stagger a few paces to my left and have to grab one of the posts of the bed for support. It was with my only free hand, then, that I had to fumble around the back of my dress to attempt to unzip it. It did not go well. At least I hadn't woken Severus, though.

"Do you need help with that, Raphaela?"

Uhhh. Scratch that.

I froze, with the odd notion in my head that he might think I was asleep if I didn't say anything or move. The fact that I was standing upright at the foot of the bed with one hand grasping the bedpost might have hinted that I was not, in fact, asleep, but certain ideas are better when you've had… how much had I had? Five shots and two pints at the bar… then what had I had at the club? Maybe one or two bombs? I remembered having a shaker in my hand at one point though. Shakers? What was I, nineteen?

"Raphaela?"

Oh, right. Man, I really should've gotten pizza. I'd regret _that_ decision for ages. "Uh, I can't find my zip." A sigh echoed in the darkness.

"Come here." I complied with grace and elegance, only falling over once, and that was just because I'd misjudged the height of the bed and instead of moving to kneel on it, I'd fallen face-forward with a whumping noise. Wait, whumping? That was probably a word. And if it wasn't, who cares? It's not like I was publishing a dissertation using that word. Note to self: totally do that. Still lying on my stomach on the bed, face full of sheets, I felt a pair of cold hands reach down my back and undo my dress for me. I giggled like a madwoman and heard the sound muffled by the mouthful of sheets I had, only ceasing my giggles when I heard Severus' weary sigh. With some hardship, as I refused to sit up, I pulled my dress off and somehow managed to get underneath the blankets to the warmth I'd been so looking forward to. It seemed like I'd spent the past few hours wanting to be asleep, but the moment my head hit the pillow I cursed my brain. It felt like it was on spin cycle with soda, still racing at a million miles an hour. I turned over to face the middle of the bed, and even though Severus was awake and watching me intently, I poked him to get his attention.

"You're incredibly irritating," he said in response, glaring at me. "Even more so when you've been drinking. I must say though, this is possibly the most intoxicated I've ever seen you."

"An'… an' don't you forget it," I said, trying to glare at him with my nose scrunched up. I reached out a hand and prodded him in the shoulder, the motion sending me flopping onto my stomach. I eventually got back onto lying on my side and grinned. "You… you know thuh… though… this is so, so, so, so, so not the drunkest that I have ever been, no, no it is not."

"I find that entirely believable," he replied mildly.

"I would say, yes, would say that the drunkest, that I have ever been," I began, then lost interest and began poking Severus again. He abruptly grabbed hold of my wrist and since I hadn't the energy to move my other arm out from under my ribcage, I had to refrain from poking him. For now, anyway. My eyelids drooped closed but my brain was still racing. "Did you know that a baby duck is called a pogling?" I muttered.

"No it isn't," he said, and I felt his grip on my wrist loosen as he too felt the icy hand of sleep upon him. I moved closer and put the now-free arm around him, my face against his shoulder.

"I lied about that, yes," I admitted thickly. "I… I am probably going to drool on you if I fall asleep like this."

"I know," he said wearily and put his arm around me in reciprocation. "You tend to do that."

"Heheh," I giggled. "I'm _gross_."

"And yet I still… love you," he said after a moment's pause. He was still having trouble with expressing any kind of affection, but he was getting there. "I'll be sure to alert the papers. They'll be astounded."

"About as astounded as your… as your _face_ is when it…" I trailed off. It was a reasonably good burn, wasn't it? Well, I couldn't quite remember what my burn had been, but I was sure that it had been excellent. Severus would remember that burn until his dying days, and someday tell the story to his grandkids of the night that Raphaela had burned him so bad it hurt every single one of his feelings. Wait, grandkids? I don't know why I just said that. Thought that. Because that would necessitate regular kids. And that was not going to happen. Aint no foetuses getting up in _this_ womb, no siree. I should put a… keep out sign on my uterus so that they know that they're not... welcome around…

"Your sentences are admirable," Severus muttered thickly, but the words barely entered my head. My mind was swimming in visions of chicken coops and… and spaceships… and electrified fences…


	9. Sick

I think I'll just say that this chapter was stupidly easy to write because of my own unfortunate levels of near-alcoholism. PITY MEEEEEEE.

**Chapter Nine: Sick**

"Raphaela, wake up."

"I look around me and I see it isn't so!" I cried, sitting up straight in bed. I almost head-butted Severus as he bent over me to try and wake me, and if it weren't for his lightning-fast reflexes I would have incapacitated him, which would have been awful. I mean, there was a class to be taught at nine, and I sure as hell wasn't going to do it. "Severus," I said, glaring at him. I tried to look as intimidating as possible but it probably wasn't working. I was incredibly un-intimidating. Timidating? "I'm not teaching today. I'm going to go back to sleep, and if you wake me again I'm going to throw up in your mouth."

"You will do nothing of the sort," Severus said quickly, though he'd paled and taken a step back. Swish! "Have you forgotten that there are no classes, since it is Saturday?"

"Yes."

"It is."

"Excellent."

Severus looked at me for a moment, some small amusement showing in his eyes but nowhere else. It was very peculiar. Almost as peculiar as the raging hangover that had just decided to set up camp in my body. Every muscle I owned ached, my skin felt like it had been slapped all over by the hand of some omnipotent presence, my head felt fuzzy and too-big, my stomach churned and ached, and my mouth felt like I'd face-planted a sandpit. Which, incidentally, I totally did do after the end-of-seventh-year party at Lacy's, when Lucindy and I were running around her backyard drunk off our faces. Ahh, youth.

"Are you feeling okay?" Severus asked, taking another step back. I must have gone green at the thought of running around. It may just have to become a necessity though… oops, yeah, it would have to become a necessity. I reached the bathroom and collapsed in a heap by the toilet, emptying my stomach into it. Gross. I flailed my arm around and pressed flush quickly so Severus wouldn't have to look at my sick. Because I was considerate like that. Sick was gross. Just in time, too, for I heard footsteps behind me and something draped over my bare shoulders. It was the blue throw rug that had hitherto lived on one of the couches in front of the fire.

"See, remember when I got this?" I said, waggling a finger in what I hoped was his direction. "You said it was silly, because we would never even use it for anything. And look now, it has like, fifty ordinary household uses."

"You're going to have to stop using that phrase to describe everything, Raphaela," came Severus' voice from behind me. "And this is the first thing you've used this throw for. You will just refuse to admit that its purchase was a bad decision."

"Raphaela Vialle does not make bad decisions," I said loudly, before drawing the rug closer around me. The tiles were freezing and I was just in my underpants. "Ungh… all that booze tasted a lot better last night. Good thing I didn't get pizza like I wanted to, though. Otherwise I would be seeing mad chunks."

"Charming," Severus muttered, patting me on the head.

"Merlin, now I want pizza," I said, laughing. "You should bring me back something when you go to breakfast, I don't think I could go anywhere now."

"Go?" Severus echoed. "I was under the impression that the thing to do was to stay and ensure your reduced suffering." Well, that was ridiculously sweet of him. I'd have to reward that sweetness with a free pass to go to breakfast without me. I was just that nice. And I really, really didn't want him to see my sick.

"I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed," I said. "Go, my sweet chariot dove, ride the wings of pestilence to where delicious breakfasty foodstuffs await you."

"Chariot dove?" he sad derisively. "I think perhaps dehydration has affected your brain." I heard him leaving the bathroom and wondered if he'd actually gone to breakfast, but he returned moments later with a goblet of water and set it down next to me. Well. If he was this nice just for a little hangover, maybe I should go out on the sauce more often. I had to milk his infrequent sweetness for all I could. In a few more moments, I heard the door shut, and knew for sure this time that he'd gone. Well, that was a relief, and I could sick in comfort. Well, as much comfort as could be had when you're bare-legged on a cold tile floor in a dungeon and your stomach is convulsing so much that it feels like it wants to escape. I kind of missed having Severus around already.

After a few more retches with no result, I downed the goblet of water in one and crawled back across the room to the bed. The bathroom had been absolutely _freezing_. There were goosebumps all over my legs and I was even shivering, and the fact that I'd just been violently sick probably didn't help. I dragged the throw rug into bed with me and pulled the blankets over my head, savouring the warmth that hadn't quite left yet. It was so warm and dark under there, it was like… I don't know. A warm cave or something. Hangovers are not conductive to good similes. Now that I was curled up on my side, my stomach began to feel normal again and even my head started to settle after the water treatment and being plunged into darkness. I realised that I'd probably only been asleep for about two hours, and that was enough to send me drifting off again.


	10. Pizza and Pity

MakeLoveNotHorcruxes, your review gave me epic giggles for like ten minutes. I can so imagine it, too. Raph'd be all like, "now, I know you think a tattoo is cool because all your friends are getting them, but the truth is that getting a tattoo is about as edgy as a hippopotamus. And seriously, a skull with a snake? Why don't you just get a dolphin jumping over a rainbow, you cliche whore." Then Sev would get all don't-want-to-talk-about-it awkward but it wouldn't matter because Raph would laugh at her own jokes until she forgot what she was talking about and decided to go stare out the window and eat jam. Ahh, good times.

**Chapter Ten: Pizza and Pity**

I awoke some time later with a mouthful of blanket. Somehow, I had managed to starfish out while keeping my head covered, so I was without cover from the knees down and I couldn't breathe. Smooth. I pulled the covers down with both my hands and my feet so that I was covered from the torso down, and when that was completed to satisfaction, I gazed at the clock. 1.20pm. Hmm. It was odd, really. Usually I'd have been woken by whatever the hell Severus had decided to be doing, but the place appeared deserted. Was it possible that he'd decided to stay for a _breakfast marathon_? If so, that was totally awesome and I was totally jealous. Then I noticed the delicious aromas coming from the nightstand. _Pizza rolls!_ I had never loved Severus more than I did at that moment. I sat up and practically inhaled the first one before realising that my splitting headache had returned and my stomach wasn't doing too well, either. Not to mention my still-aching muscles. I pulled on my most comfortable pants and a navy t-shirt with the vague idea in my head of going to see where Severus was, but there was a note next to the pizza rolls that I hadn't seen from my bed position.

_You said you wanted pizza, I expect you'll still be in the mood for it when you wake up. In order to avoid the horror that you'll surely be awake, I have left you to your slumber. If I have not returned by the time you awaken and I am required, I may be in the staff room._

_S._

Well, it was time for a wandering, then. It wasn't like I was going to go back to sleep, and I kind of really wanted a hug. I pulled on some socks so that my toes wouldn't drop off, pulled the blue throw rug around me, grabbed a pizza roll for the road, and left the dungeons. I probably looked very sorry for myself, dragging around that throw rug and taking little bites out of the pizza roll as I walked, but whatever. It was just students I was encountering anyway, and what did they know about anything? Nothing, that's what. Eventually I made it to the staff room and found it to be almost empty, save for Severus sitting on one of the vinyl-covered-foam chairs and conversing with Flitwick and Sprout, who were sitting perpendicular to him. At the glances of the latter, Severus turned his head and his face turned to amusement and mild pity. I shuffled over to where he was sitting and sat next to him, drawing my knees up to my chin and pulling the throw rug closer around me, trying not to get any pizza on it. A moment after my head rested on his shoulder, he gave an exasperated sigh and put his arm around me, to smirks from Flitwick and Sprout. I imagine that he would have returned them with icy glares, but since I couldn't see his face I could only assume.

"Are you getting sick, Raphaela?" Sprout asked, some concern on her face. "You look quite pale."

"Raphaela is dealing with the consequences of her actions," Severus said wearily. Flitwick grinned knowingly and Sprout still remained concerned-looking.

"I'm _suffering_," I protested. My pizza roll was all gone, and I wished I had another one. That was true pain right there. "Pity me!"

"I'm afraid all my pity has been used up," Severus said, though he didn't move his arm from around my shoulders. That was nice, if he had I would've had to berate him thoroughly. "I have only a limited amount for afflictions that you brought entirely onto yourself."

"Oh, blah," I said dismissively. "What do you expect me to do, just go out and _not_ get completely squiffy? Yeah, I didn't think so."

"Ah," Sprout said. "I'm afraid I know of no remedies for _that_ ailment. Perhaps if Severus had accompanied you then he may have exerted some influence over your consumption."

I had a visual image of Severus going out to the kinds of places my friends and I frequented and let out a snort of laughter. "Yeah, sure, that's going to happen," I said, still laughing. Now I was picturing him in reflective pants and a mesh shirt, making gang signs or something. That just made me laugh even harder, which was undoubtedly making the other occupants of the room, unaware of my thoughts, think I was completely mad. "Nah, I was with my friends last night." The thought of Severus being on any kind of terms with my friends was completely foreign to me. Severus wasn't my friend, Severus was Severus. It was madness to think of him in any other setting.

"I would think," Severus said after I'd calmed down from my laughing fit, "that someone who has been drinking for at least ten years would have some modicum of knowledge about her own limitations."

"Well, I didn't break anything, did I?" I said defensively. "And I didn't throw up last night at all. Just this morning."

"And that's better?"

"Well, no, obviously it's better to throw up at the time, but it _proves_ that I knew my limitations at the time. Just not for today. What am I, a psychic? Besides, you should be pitying me. All of my muscles are angry with me."

"Only because it's easier not to argue, I will concede to pitying you," Severus said, ignoring the smirks from Sprout and Flitwick as he pulled me somewhat closer. "I'm still right though."

He wasn't, obviously. But he was right about one thing, it was easier not to argue. Better to just shutup and get hugged.


	11. Highway to the Danger Zone

Now we're gettin' into the ever-so-slightly longer chapters, so appreciate this, y'all. And srsly, MakeLoveNotHorcruxes, that is AWESOME. I can totally imagine what she'd be like at an AA meeting, too. "So, like, you guys don't drink on weekdays AT ALL? Man, that's gotta be tough. What, no weekends either? What about Christmas? You have to drink at Christmas. Otherwise who'll be the one passed out on their stomach on the kitchen table slurring abuse at family members? Man, you guys must be no fun at all. I'd want to stay anonymous too."

Anyway, enjoy.

**Chapter Eleven: Highway to the Danger Zone**

My hangover subsided eventually, as they are wont to do. I heard somewhere that something like ninety percent of one's body weight is water. I think that in me, that would have been reduced to about ten percent, since I probably chugged about seven pints of the stuff before beginning to feel pacified. Then water began making me nauseous, so I had to switch to pumpkin juice, which I wasn't complaining about. That stuff was awesome. I didn't _really_ feel better until I had eaten about half my body weight in pizza at dinner. Then I felt as though I'd have been ready to do it over. I mean, I wasn't, but I could've done if I wanted to. It was true that I was no longer a spring chicken, so to speak, but I wasn't dead yet.

I was as surprised as Severus was annoyed to see Lucindy leaning against his doorway when we went down to the dungeons after dinner. Her face broke into a wide grin when she saw me, and she winked at Severus in a manner that made him bristle and let out an annoyed half-sigh. "What're you doing here, Luce?" I asked, hugging her. Her messy hair and the circles under her eyes (which I was sure I matched perfectly) were a sign that she'd had just as much fun as I had the previous night.

"We're going out again," she said, smiling. "Don't you remember, you spent about an hour talking about how you never see us, and you were going to go out with us every night for the rest of your life."

"I'm sure I was exaggerating," I said as we went into the rooms. Lucindy shrugged.

"Obviously I'm not going out with you every night. Just tonight, since it's a Saturday."

"And tomorrow, since it's a Sunday?" I said sceptically. She smiled.

"Well, I wasn't _going_ to," she said, completely unconvincingly. "But since you suggested it, there _are_ cheap pints on at that place down near the pier on Sundays."

"I hate that place," I sighed. "Okay, let's go out. Let's make it a quiet one though, I don't want another raging hangover tomorrow morning."

"Deal," Lucindy agreed. She winked at Severus again. "I'll try and have her back in one piece."

Twelve hours later, I was hunched over my favourite porcelain friend again. I don't know why I thought I could go out without getting absolutely hammered. I'd never been able to manage it before, the virtue of being twenty-eight wasn't going to magically bestow on me the power to stop after one drink. Severus was performing the dance of throw-rug draping and delivering me fluids (har har) that I appreciated beyond all knowledge and thus sent him off to eat breakfast like a normal person and not have to spend his Sunday looking at sick. I'd obviously managed to _go_ to that pizza place on the way home, since I _was_ seeing mad chunks this time. And it was disgusting. Even more disgusting than the time I first tried bombs and had to run to the bathroom to throw up a mixture of partially-digested pancakes and what felt like battery acid. Pizza vomit was something I had to close my eyes and flail for the toilet-flusher with. It was bad.

An owl chirruped next to me and dropped a letter by my knees before flying off, and I took a break from vomiting to try and drink something and read the letter.

_Babe, can't make tonight. Remember jumping that fence? I think I broke my ankle._

_Lucindy_

I choked out a small laugh whilst trying to keep my stomach from convulsing, which was quite difficult. Thankfully I'd peaked early in the night and had returned home at eleven (or so I'd been told) singing the chorus to that Highway to the Danger Zone song over and over again. While embarrassing, as my voice could stop traffic (in the bad way), at least I'd managed to get about seven hours of sleep before being woken at half past six and rushing myself to the bathroom once again. I dragged the blue throw to one of the squashy green armchairs in front of the fire and sat in it with the throw rug wrapped around myself, sort-of waiting for Severus to come back. It turned out that I didn't have to wait long. Barely ten minutes passed before I heard footsteps in the corridor behind me and Severus made his way quietly into the room. Upon seeing that I was awake and no longer throwing up, he made some sort of weird half-smile thing and tossed a croissant at me.

"You really are too lovely to me," I said, taking a bite out of my croissant. He shrugged. Apparently I'd had the presence of mind to put on shorts and a tank top before going to bed the previous night, as the room wasn't being graced by public nudity. Severus would be pleased. He'd always considered it the height of uncouthness (uncouthness? Uncouthity?) to be parading about in only one's underpants, despite how agreeable the view might have been. Severus couldn't be said to have noticed my clothing-related aptitude, however, as he was leaning against a desk, looking away from me.

"Will you be repeating the performance tonight and tomorrow morning?" he asked, in a way that seemed both rhetorical and literal. I began to formulate a response but he continued. "Because at some point in the future I'd appreciate having a… a you that isn't either so drunk you're walking into bedposts or so sick you've actually gone green."

"I don't walk into _bedposts_."

"Oh, but you did," he said, still not turning to face me. "About midnight. You walked into a bedpost, whispered 'danger zone' at it, then crawled over and invited me to feel the lump forming on your forehead."

Well, that was the first I'd heard of _that_. Sounded like the kind of thing I'd do though. I reached up and touched my forehead, and sure enough, there was a bump on the left side. "I see," I said, hoping to sound mysterious and not dumbfounded.

"You don't sound mysterious," Severus said, turning to face me at last. He _did _look a little annoyed with me. Oops. Got to give him points for knowing what I was going for, though. "I don't want you going away again tonight."

"Is that so?" I said, forgetting all instances of supreme niceness on his part. "Well, maybe I _feel_ like going out, what do you think of _that_?" Who was he to tell me what to do? He was probably getting jealous again, like he always did. For no reason at all, I might add. He knew that I didn't want anyone except him.

"I prefer you present, sober, not throwing up, or preferably all of the above," he said, sounding a little more forceful this time. Still telling me what to do though, and I did not stand for that, no siree.

"Tellin' me what to do," I muttered. "Maybe I _want_ to go out tonight, ever think of _that_?"

"Obviously," he said, clearly annoyed. "Since it's what this conversation is about."

"Well, I think that if I want to go out, then I'll go out," I said, standing up and bringing myself up to my full height. I didn't want to go out, but that wasn't the point. I wanted to be _able_ to. "In fact, I think I'm going to go and do something right now, without _you_ cramping my style, you style-cramper."

"It's barely eight in the morning," he said icily. Well, he had me there. I didn't care though. I turned on my heel, and still dragging the throw rug, I left the rooms and walked away.

* * *

A/N: The Highway to the Danger Zone bit was taken in part from a story my sister told me about the time she got so drunk she was lying under a table singing that song while her guy-friends threw bits of balled up paper at her. She's funny.


	12. But Home is Nowhere

**Cross-posted to my profile: **If anyone's interested (and I'm assuming you won't be) I just made a twitter for a certain R. Vialle. It's just an exercise in creativity really (and OH GOD I LOVE WRITING HER SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME). https :// twitter. com /rvialle (without the spaces). Check it.

And now... shit gets real.

**Chapter Twelve: …But Home is Nowhere**

So whoever can guess what the title of this chapter is from gets some virtual cookies. Fresh-baked this morning, y'know. Or, fresh-pixelated. Whatever.

* * *

So I hadn't really thought through where exactly I was going to go after I stormed out of Severus' quarters with only the tank top and shorts I had on plus the throw rug I'd been dragging around. Going anywhere public was out of the question, obviously, so I went to the only other place I knew – my old quarters, where I'd lived before realising that I was madly in love with Severus and needed to spend every second of every day with him. Well, _these_ seconds would be spent far away from him and his stupid insecurities. I pushed open the door and found the place mostly unchanged, aside from a small girl leaning over the desk. It was Ana, in her usual brown pigtails, and she gasped as she saw me come in.

"What're you doing here?" I asked, dumbfounded. I moved to the bed and sat on it, the throw rug wrapped tightly around myself against the chill. She was writing on a long piece of parchment but had paused mid-word and ink was creating a small circle in her work.

"Sorry if I shouldn't be, it's just that you showed me this place and it's deserted all the time and it's too loud in the common room and I can't do my work and -"

"Ana, calm down, it's fine," I said, attempting to pacify her. "You know, you could be working in the library."

"I don't need books," she said, rather smugly in fact. I'd have to take her down a rung or two in Potions class, then again Severus would probably do that. He was quite good at killing one's buzz. Almost… too good. "And it's the same problem. People always trying to talk to me when I'm trying to work." Excellent, she'd made friends then. I had been a bit worried about Ana when I heard she'd be coming here. An annoying little know-it-all like her could find herself quite lonesome in a school of magic. Not that I'd had that problem, my horrific ineptitude for every subject other than Potions was as well-known as it was debilitating. I almost had to repeat fifth year, but it turned out that my 100% at Potions balanced out my shocking 0% for Divination, accomplished by not having turned up to the exam. It wasn't _my_ fault, though. Lucindy and some guy were having a very public break-up by greenhouse two and I had to be there both for the entertainment value and to console Lucindy afterwards. By 'console' I mean 'we snuck out to Hogsmeade for ice-cream and to laugh about the emotional destruction of whatever guy it was'. Lucindy was a laugh, even if I was usually lumped with the task of listening to the guy whine for a week afterwards about how he just _loved_ her _so_ much, and _why_ didn't she love him like he loved her? Oh, good times.

At that sudden moment, I realised that Ana had been staring at me for the past five minutes and I'd been gazing blankly at the corner of the desk. Smooth. "Well you see," I said, trying desperately to remember what it is she'd said. "You see… erm… what's that you're writing there anyway?"

"History of Magic essay. A half-roll of parchment on what the International Wizarding Conference of 1366 means to me." I recognised all of the words and the way in which they were combined into a sentence, but I was still lost. And I think Ana knew it. "Basically they just made tougher laws for people who cursed each other."

"That's just lovely, Ana," I managed to say. "Use this room all you want… I'm never here."

"I know," she said with a smile. "What're you doing here now?"

"Escaping," I said shortly, before sitting on the bed. The blue throw was still wrapped around my shoulders and I pulled it tighter around me.

"From Professor Snape?" she queried. It took me a moment to realise she was talking about Severus, and I nodded quickly to send the bewildered expression off my face. Ana assumed a knowing expression that was somewhat irksome. "Mum said in her last owl that it was just a matter of time before you realised what a creepy old bat he is."

"I'll have you know he's… well… okay, he's exactly a creepy old bat," I admitted. Well, he was. "But I _already_ know that. So your mum really doesn't have a case against him."

"You're still escaping," Ana reminded me. I grumbled somewhat.

"Well, I've got good reason." She raised her eyebrows. "I _do_. He was all, I don't want you going out again tonight, and I was all like, hey, don't tell _me_ what to do. See Ana, nobody tells _me_ what to do. I don't follow nobody's rules." She cracked up, giggling insanely. I couldn't help it. I joined her in fits of the giggles that took a while to subside.

It was interesting, to say the least, spending an afternoon with my niece. Eventually I went through the place to see if I'd left anything behind in my gradual shift to Severus', and found a bunch of old magazines that I used to read religiously back when I had my own place, worked somewhere I _didn't_ live. I flicked through them casually as Ana continued writing her essay, and it was in somewhat comfortable silence that the bulk of our time was passed.

Eventually it started getting dark outside, and Ana packed up her things and left me alone. It was beginning to get chilly, too, so I spread the throw rug over the pre-existing blankets on the bed and slipped in. It was probably only about eight or nine, considering what time of year it was, but I really couldn't be bothered lighting candles or anything like that. Wide awake, I lay on my side in the bed I hadn't occupied for about half a year, wondering how I'd gotten to this point. Back in my old bed. I'd had a similar experience when I'd gone back to my parents' place for the summer. Then, at least, I'd been so familiar with my old room that it wasn't super-hard adjusting (though I never got used to being without Severus) but now I was back in a bed I hadn't even used for a year, and it was like running into someone I'd met while drunk. It seems somewhat known, but it's still unsettling. And I was still without Severus. Being alone in bed, that was an unpleasant feeling. Tiny movements, they were gone. The stillness was creepy. No sounds of breathing or the tiny snorts that Severus sometimes emitted when he was dreaming about being a rhinoceros (he'd told me about it once while half-asleep and though he denied it afterwards, I would always know the truth). The silence was oppressive. No sleepy body rolled over beside me to drape an arm over the dip in my waist. The nearest human being was not inches but hundreds of yards away. I'd never felt so alone in my life, not after spending the past Merlin-knows-how-long sleeping next to _him_.

I stared out the window at the stars beginning to sparkle brightly. The sky around them was a dark navy, almost black now. It was probably around half past nine, or a bit earlier maybe. My head swam with visions of roses, owls and statues. Images melted into one another and I felt my eyes droop closed. Damn sleepiness, I was almost being poetic before it decided to take over. Oh well.


	13. Explosive

This chapter is a little longer than usual, but it is full of vaguely important bits and (hopefully) super-sweet entertainment value, so don't go skipping over it. The shit, it gets so real you can smell it. ...I think I'll use a different metaphor next time.

**Chapter Thirteen: Explosive**

I was awake at six. This was important. It was important because Severus usually woke me at six and I constantly resisted, grabbing snatches of extra sleep whenever I could. But Severus wasn't with me, seeing as I was back in my old quarters, and my waking up at six could be ascribed only to the inhumanly early night I'd gotten. It wasn't my fault I just _slept_ when I didn't have anything better to do though. It was an admirable quality, really. I'm sure very many people would be extremely jealous of it. A sharp knock at the door roused me from my stupor and I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion momentarily. Who on earth would be knocking at the door? Who knew I was there? Only Ana, really, and it was hard to believe she'd be wanting to come and study at half past six on a Monday. I stumbled sleepily over and swung open the door to see McGonagall walking swiftly away. At the sound of the door opening, though, she turned, and a look of intense relief spread across her face.

"Raphaela," she said, walking back towards me. "What on earth are you doing?"

"I'm just standing here," I said defensively. "What are _you_ doing, more like."

"Ten minutes ago Severus comes storming into my office trying to round up a _posse_, for Merlin's sake." She even looked annoyed with me now, and I felt somewhat sheepish, though I still couldn't make head nor tails of what she was talking about. "Eventually I got him to agree to wait half an hour, and if I couldn't find you by then, we'd rally the troops, so to speak."

"What?" I asked, dumbfounded. She took my by the arm and started leading me away from my lovely warm bed in the direction of her office. I was still in the tank top and shorts and it was _cold_, damn it.

"There isn't time to explain everything to you, Raphaela. Merlin, sometimes I think you're as thick-headed as Severus always says." How rude! We'd see who was stupid when… when… well, I couldn't think of an ending to that. But it was still rude. I followed her a surprisingly short distance to her office, where Severus was sitting very tensely in a hard-backed chair. McGonagall moved around to her chair behind the desk and glowered at the both of us. "She was in her old quarters, Severus, and I'm surprised you didn't think to _check _that before involving _me._ I don't know what's going on here and quite frankly I don't want to know, but you two need to learn to resolve your disputes without _my_ assistance. Severus, I have recovered your wife. I suggest both of you leave my office this instant."

We complied instantly, Severus storming out angrily and me slinking sheepishly. I'd always hated getting McGonagall mad when I was a student, and when she was my boss it was no different. The cold stone was freezing my feet numb so I walked as quickly as I could back down to the dungeons, and incidentally that just so happened to be keeping up with Severus' storm. I was somewhat out of breath by the time we got back to his place, and as I dove onto the bed to plunge my icy feet under the blankets, Severus slammed the door shut and turned to glare at me.

"Quit that, I'm the one who should be glaring," I said roughly, waiting for my feet to warm. It was taking a stupidly long time. "You're the one who got McGonagall involved just because I wasn't _here_."

"Exactly, Raphaela," Severus said, still glaring daggers at me. "You _said_ you were going out and then you didn't return by the morning. I was not to know you were simply hiding out in the castle."

"And where was I going to go when I was barefoot in my sleep stuff?" I said in a condescending tone. So I was trying to make him feel as stupid as he always made me feel, I admit it. We weren't nearly equal in that regard. "Besides, we both know that you only freaked out because you're so completely insecure. You _know_ I only want you, but you still freak out just because you _imagine_ I'm with someone else. That's what happened, isn't it?" It wasn't really a question I wanted an answer to, I was just trying to prove a point, but he looked like he was about to spit venom, he was so enraged.

"You don't understand," he said, nearing a yell now. "You have absolutely no idea."

"What are you talking about?" I said, yelling back. Well, I wasn't about to take his raised-voice lying down, was I? Yeah, didn't think so.

"_This is not about me_," he roared. It was even beginning to frighten me, and I felt myself edging back to press against the bed-head, away from him. "You come home, and you're walking into doors, and you're falling on things, and you're hitting your face against things so hard you almost pass out, and you don't remember any of it in the morning." I would've opened my mouth to respond and argue, but the back of my head was pressed hard against the stone wall, my eyes were wide and my jaws were clamped shut. There was no way I was saying a word while he was like _that_. "Then you spend the day convulsing on the bathroom floor and walking around like a bloody _Inferi_, for Merlin's sake." He was still raging, storming around the room and grasping the backs of chairs so hard that his knuckles went even whiter than usual. I wondered how much he wanted to throttle me that hard. In that state, I wouldn't have put it past him, so I still didn't utter a sound. I willed myself through the wall, to somehow escape from that room, but it remained cold, hard and unyielding. I was stuck, it seemed. "You could have been dead, every night for the past three nights you could so easily have been dead. London is _dangerous_, even if you weren't a clumsy, drunken _imbecile_ of a girl. Do you not comprehend that I don't want you dead? Or do you think I stay awake waiting for you just because I don't enjoy sleeping?"

He'd reached the end of his tirade, it seemed, as he was visibly winding down, like a battery had run out. He turned his head towards me, seemingly wondering why I hadn't said a word in the past three minutes (new record, I guess) and I saw a stab of realisation in his eyes. I knew what he was seeing, a terrified girl pressed hard against the wall, eyes wide as saucers and mouth slightly agape. He moved over to the bed swiftly and knelt on it, seemingly alarmed at what I looked like. I still hadn't moved a muscle, except for my eyes, which had never stopped being locked onto him. Usually if someone was angry with me I'd look away, or down at my feet, but to be honest Severus' temper frightened me. I was going to make sure I could see him at all times, in case he tried something. No, I couldn't even finish that thought. That… it wasn't the kind of thing he'd do. The kind of person I'd be married to wouldn't be the kind of person who'd do that. He made a sudden move toward me and I flinched involuntarily, causing him to retract as though he'd been slapped. He looked surprised, at what I couldn't say, but his expression softened. He moved more slowly towards me this time, and I realised that all he was going to do was to put his arms around me. He did so, gripping me so tightly I could barely breathe, but I still didn't move. I felt paralysed. Consciously, I knew that Severus _loved_ me, that he'd never do anything to hurt me, but when someone's screaming at you, torturing chairs and making sudden movements towards you, animal instinct kicks in.

"I don't want anything to happen to you," he muttered, not letting me go. "Despite appearances… I like having you around."

"I know," I said in a monotone. I wasn't sure if I'd blinked at all. Finally, instinct left my body and rational thought became dominant once more, and I returned his vice-like grip. "Heh, good thing I didn't really know you when you were doing all that Voldemort stuff, right? Otherwise I'd be the one yelling at you to stop being such a damn fool and you'd be the one scared out of your wits." He didn't reply, he just continued with his python-esque grasp. "Then again, you don't really scare easily. I might have to put a sheet over myself so I look like a ghost to really frighten you." He still didn't reply. "But then you might just get cross with me for cutting eye-holes in a perfectly good sheet." Still nothing. "Or maybe your terrible fear of ghosts would just take over and you'd just hide under a desk while shrieking 'a g-g-g-g-g-ghost!' like on those old cartoons." Was he ever going to talk again? "Then I could be all like, 'why, Severus, you look like you've seen a ghost'. I've always wanted to say that to someone at an opportune time. Like, if I'm pretending to be a ghost. Which I will be. Pretending to be a ghost, that is. Because if there's one thing that gives you the heebie-jeebies, it's ghostly apparitions. Isn't that right?" It wasn't, obviously, but he wasn't denying it. It was beginning to weird me out. "I hear that… um… broomstick prices are pretty high. What do you think of that?" This was very odd. "Aren't you going to tell me to shutup, that my inane drivel is like a skewer to your ears?"

"Not at all," he finally said. "Drivel on."

"Then drivel on I shall!" I cried, grinning like an idiot. I could barely believe I'd been scared by _this_ guy. He was just lovely. The loveliest of lovelies. He thought my drivel was _awesome_. And he was all mine, forever.


	14. Who’s Afraid…?

And shit remains being real but less overpoweringly stinky. It's being left out in the sun to whiten. Are people getting these metaphors?

**Chapter Fourteen: Who's Afraid…?**

I decided to take the day off from teaching. Even if I did forgive Severus for yelling at me, I still didn't feel very good about it. I could tell he was feeling somewhat guilty anyway, so I figured that if I let him pick up the slack then he might feel a bit better, like he'd made some kind of amends. Instead of teaching fourth-year students how to brew a sleeping draught, I sat at the fancy old writing desk and wrote letters to Lucindy and the others. I felt very nineteenth century while I was doing it, like at any moment I'd spontaneously morph into Virginia Woolf and go and drown myself in a river or something. She was nineteenth century, right? Whatever time she was from, that's what I felt like. I felt very Virginia. Anyway, I figured that I should keep in touch with my friends, since that whole not-seeing-them-for-a-year thing was entirely horrific. We were young(ish), we were hip(ish), and even if one of us was cooped up in the dungeon of an ancient castle nine months out of the year, we should still be keeping in touch. Now that I think of it, 'keeping in touch' as a concept was quite weird, and possibly entirely creepy. Ew.

By the time I finished the letters it was lunchtime and I felt weird, almost domestic. Like I should be folding laundry or baking cookies. These concepts were completely ridiculous, since even if the house-elves didn't do everything anyway, I had all the domestic ability of a common house cat. I could get things dirty, sure, but cleaning them? Unrecognisable concept. Probably just stuck in a nineteenth-century mindset. Speaking of stuck in the past, what was the deal with this stupid castle anyway? I mean, candles and quill pens? I mean, I got the whole no electricity thing, but still, you'd think that there'd be _some_ kind of breakthrough in magical appliances by now. I mean, we were _magic_. Magic!

I pondered that as I ambled up to the Great Hall for lunchy-munchies. I was feeling oddly omnipotent, like any random passer-by would think I was some kind of messiah with my blank half-smile. Or that I was on drugs. Or just a bit of a simpleton. Whatever though. They didn't know diddly-squat about my awesome omnipotence. Wait, diddly-squat? What was I, sixty years old or something? I should have been swearing like a drunken fishwife who's just stubbed her toe. Must have been my odd omnipotence. Perhaps nineteenth-century-ness just brought it out in me. Perhaps it was my sombre meditations on the letters I wrote to my friends that led to the Zen state I was in. Or maybe it was just a thing, and I should bloody well accept it. The Great Hall was abuzz, as it always was, and damned if I didn't feel like some kind of Jesus-like figure amongst the disordered disciples. Like I could rise up and defy gravity at any moment and they would know _me_ as the true saviour of wizardkind. Then again, I was probably just in a weird mood. I took my seat next to Severus as I always did, and smiled broadly before crossing my legs in what I hoped was a very Zen sort of a way.

"Have you been drinking?" Severus asked shrewdly as I continued to smile maniacally at him. I laughed in a very messiah-like way, as an older relative would do if a young nephew had asked what clouds are made of.

"Whatever gave you that idea, my young disciple?" I said softly, continuing to smile placidly. Merlin, there was something wrong with me.

"You're acting… peculiar. You haven't been drinking, though. If you had, you'd be swaying more. And staring." He was far too familiar with my drunken antics. I'd have to remedy that. But how? "You seem to be acting like some sort of cult leader."

"Ah yes," I said in rather a pompous way. "I'm just feeling quite omnipotent at the moment."

"That powerful?" Severus replied, one eyebrow raised. What? I felt my omnipotence fade as my confusion rose. Damn him!

"What?" I said, cocking my head. "You know, like, feeling nice towards everything."

"You mean benevolent."

"… Shutup."

He smirked and went back to his food, and now that he had single-handedly sapped my… _benevolence_, there was nothing for me to do but to eat. And eat I did, for my missing of breakfast meant that I needed to stock up. I was running dangerously low on Vitamin Croissant and that had to be remedied. Luckily, there were chocolate croissants today, and sweet Merlin, they were so delicious I wanted to drain all the blood from my body and replace it with liquefied chocolate croissants. Actually, that's an entirely disgusting concept.

"So, how was teaching, Sir TeachesclasswhileI'mdoingsomethingelse?" I grinned. My appetite had left me at the shocking image of a chocolate croissant mush IV and so I decided to engage Severus in conversation instead. He turned and glared at me shrewdly.

"As much fun as you'd expect taming a group of twenty fourteen-year-olds to be," he replied. "Single-handedly, I might add. Don't think you're getting away with skiving off again."

I pouted and tried to look pathetic in a kind of big-eyed, down-turned face kind of way. I probably looked like I was about to throw up, but it was worth the gamble if it'd get me out of doing actual work. Virginia Woolf never _worked_. Actually, I'm not sure if that's true. And I'm pretty sure that I should definitely not use her as my role model when all I know about her is that she was a writer, lived in old times, and drowned herself.

A sudden movement from Severus' direction caught me off-guard and I involuntarily flinched, managing to scoot my chair loudly a few inches to the right in my momentum. Of course, he'd just been turning around to answer a question put to him by Sprout, who'd approached behind us when I wasn't looking. At my movement his head jerked around to stare at me in a weird, piercing sort of a way. It made me feel quite odd, to be honest. I didn't break his gaze, though. I just kept staring blank-faced back at him.

And it didn't look like Sprout would be getting an answer anytime soon.


	15. Blur

Just a little note to let y'all know that the mid-semester break is starting, like, now, so I won't be updating until next Saturday.

MakeLoveNotHorcruxes asked about Snape's age, so I thought that in case anyone else was wondering I'd write a little bit about the Stupidly Detailed Timeline that I take far too seriously and religiously stick to. If you're not interested in any of the timeline stuff, then skip over this bit, or you'll all be bored as rakes.

Skip now!

According to the HP Lexicon, Snape was born in 1960.

Raphaela went to Hogwarts 1983-1990, meaning that her last year at Hogwarts was just before Harry and co.'s first year (again, according to HP Lexicon). This is, of course, allowing for the fact that I don't live in a place where the September-June/July/whatever school year happens so I'm a little fuzzy on the deets. We schedule our school years to fit with the actual year, WHICH MAKES A HELL OF A LOT MORE SENSE THAN YOU CRAZY SEPTEMBER-JUNE/JULY/WHATEVER DUDES. Um... yeah. Anyway, so she was born in 1973, making her thirteen years younger than Snape.

The first story in this series was set in 2000 (R was 27, S was 40) at the start of the school year and ran until maybe the end of the calendar year, the second story ran from a few weeks after the first ended to maybe Easter or the end of the school year, I can't really remember. So this fic starts in 2001, Raph's twenty-eight, Snape's forty-one, and it runs through the entire school year.

Okay, those of you that skipped can come back in. Those of you that didn't skip, I'M SO VERY SORRY FOR PROBABLY BORING YOU TO THE EXTENT THAT YOU BECOME RAKES.

**Chapter Fifteen: Blur**

I didn't go back to the dungeons after lunch, not to help Severus teach or just to bum around doing nothing. I sort of slipped out quietly before lunch ended and just hung out down on the grounds. Halloween hadn't come yet, but winter was fast approaching, that much was clear. The leaves had almost all fallen down from the trees and there was frost forming around the edges of the lake. It was a creepy image. Leaf-less trees had always made me uncomfortable, for some reason, and today was no exception. I turned away and looked back up at the mammoth castle that loomed before me. It wasn't really any less creepy, now that I thought about it. What was I doing outside anyway, when the weather was so cold I was about to start losing extremities? I didn't go back in though. I just sat on a bench, folded my legs underneath me, and slumped. My mother would've chastised me severely for my transgressions in posture, but whatever, she wasn't there.

I remained in that position for Merlin knows how long, just sort of staring at the lake, thinking about nothing in particular. Eventually the sky turned from bright white to a dimmer grey, and when my breath was practically freezing in the air in front of me, I decided it was time to return to the relative warmth of the castle. It looked and sounded like dinner was underway in the Great Hall, but I wasn't really hungry. I just took the stairs down to the dungeons.

Severus' place down there seemed weird, coming back to it. He clearly hadn't returned since he'd left me with a kiss on the forehead that morning, since the chair by the writing desk was still out and the bed was unmade. He could be annoyingly obsessive about everything being Where It Should Be, and I knew he wouldn't have left a room without ensuring everything was perfect. I glanced at the clock by the bedside table and saw that it was about half past six. I felt extremely odd, like I was in a transitioning period. Like I'd just come home from a holiday and I still had to take off my pants and lounge about for a while before I could feel like I was _really _home. The thought came into my head of going back up to my old space, a few floors up, and before I could even entertain the notion of doing anything else, I'd turned and started moving. I was barely out of the room, though, when my down-turned head caused me to walk headlong into a tall black mass, who caught me before I could fall over out of shock.

"Hey," I said. I couldn't really think of anything else to say, since I was still feeling odd and transitory. I kind of felt a little fake, like I was putting on an act for his benefit.

"And good evening to you," he said, staring at me in that weird piercing way again. "Silence does not become you, Raphaela."

"Oh," was all I said. I cast about for something to say. "I think I left that blue throw up in my old place. I was just going to see." He nodded and let me pass, though he had that odd thought-crinkle in his forehead that he gets when he's either supremely confused, or doing the 'I'm so incredibly annoyed with you right now but I'm hiding it poorly' thing. Oh well.

It didn't take me long to get up to where I used to stay, and when I got there I didn't really want to go back to the dungeons. Not just yet, anyway. The blue throw was exactly where I'd left it, spread out on the bed, and a messy pile of magazines lay on the side of the bed that I hadn't been sleeping on. I flopped unceremoniously down on the bed and picked up a magazine.

I awoke several hours later in a daze. Somehow I'd started to snooze while reclining on the bed, and my neck was at an extremely uncomfortable angle. The magazine was crumpled under one of my legs that I'd kicked around in my slumber, not to mention the shoes that I still had on were practically poking holes in the blankets. I'd been having such a nice dream, too. I was possibly hanging out with George the talking kitty again. I remembered something very fat and ginger, standing on its hind legs with a waistcoat and pocket watch that he kept consulting in his cat-paw. Yes, that was definitely George. What had we been talking about? Something about laundry. Some new laundry powder that worked wonders on George's stained garments. Great, so now my dreams had product placement? Like I needed _that_. I was already too impressionable as it was.

A knock came at the door, thereby informing me of what had woken me up moments previous. "Raphaela?" came a voice from the other side. It was Severus', I knew that, but I didn't answer. I didn't know why, but I sort of just wanted to be alone with my dreams. I was still dozy and tired, and I was fully ready to kick off my shoes and get under the covers to sleep properly. It was not to be though, apparently, as the door crept open and Severus stepped in.

"You _are_ here, then," he said, and I nodded. "Why didn't you come to the door?" I shrugged.

"I was sleeping," I said thickly. Well, it was partly true, anyway. The thought-crinkle on his forehead hadn't left, probably ever since I'd walked away from him just hours previous. He narrowed his eyes at me.

"With shoes on?" he said. "Though, to be perfectly honest, I'd be less inclined to believe you if there wasn't drool on your face." Well, that was somewhat embarrassing. I tried to surreptitiously get it off with my sleeve, but it was hard to be surreptitious when someone's examining you with eyes so narrowed they were in danger of closing completely.

"What are you doing up here?" I asked, trying to take the focus off my disgusting sleep side-effects.

"I had expected you to return," he muttered. "I was merely checking to see that you hadn't fallen over and cracked your skull open on something." Wow, way to use my horrific clumsiness against me. "With that sorted, I shall leave you. Goodnight."

Well. That was the strangest, most uncomfortable conversation I had had in recent memory. And it stayed in my head, buzzing around like an insect, preventing me from going back to sleep. Super.


	16. Who’s Drinking?

So I'm watching HP6 and I figure since I won't be near a computer for a while I may as well shoot y'all another chapter before I leave.

**Chapter Sixteen: Who's Drinking?**

It was about four in the morning when I decided to go back down to the dungeons. I still hadn't slept after that strange conversation that Severus and I had had, and it was beginning to get annoying. I wanted to get _some_ sleep in before the sun came up and I'd be expected to teach a class. If there was one thing that could make children more irritating, it was sleep deprivation. I meandered back downstairs, the trip taking me much longer than was convenient. I was annoyed, and I was just about to yell at the empty air, when I realised that I was only about ten feet away from the doorway. Yelling while within earshot of an asleep Severus was something that I had quickly learned was a poor idea. I tried to quietly open the door and slip in, but it turned out that I needn't have bothered. Severus was very much awake and sitting at the very end of a couch by a roaring fire, holding a glass of something that looked suspiciously like booze while the decanter rested on one of the nestled tables that he hadn't even wanted to get in the first place. Take that, naysayer! My purchases were _useful_. I could tell that he knew I was there, but he hadn't turned to face me yet. He was just watching the fire.

"G'morning, soldier," I said, attempting to be cheery. I received a low sort of a half-attempted grunt in response. Lovely. I dumped the blue throw rug on a chair before ambling over to sit next to him on the couch. One of his eyelids were drooped and one eyebrow was raised. Merlin, he must have been off his face. He turned his head with a fast, over-exaggerated motion to look at me, and I tried to smile without giggling at him. He looked quite odd. "Someone's been drinking."

"Was… _you_," he slurred accusatorily. "Ahhh, I knew all of this would happen, didn't I tell you that it would?" He waggled a finger at me but lost interest halfway through and resumed his fire-staring.

"I'm sorry, you've lost me," I said. Even though I was on the next cushion, I somehow felt like I was too far away from him, so I shifted closer and leant on him.

"I told you," he said again, taking a drink from his glass. "You were the one that would. That would… would get _bored_ and depart for pastures that are of a more _verdant _hue. I told you this months ago, you recall? On the day that you, and I, were to be, wed."

"What?" I muttered. The firelight was making me sleepy. "I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere."

"You're going away," he said, somewhat defensively. "I know this to be true."

"Right, I think you need to stop drinking now," I said, taking the glass from his pale hand. He looked at it longingly so I drank it in one and glared at him. "No. We are going to talk about this in a manner that proper adults would. Now I must ask you, _what is your deal_."

"No _deals_…" he muttered as he stood up. He wandered over to the bed and flopped unceremoniously down onto it. As adorable as his drunken self was, seeing him so changed from his usual self was weirding me out, and Merlin knew that I wouldn't be getting a straight answer out of him tonight. With a sigh, I followed his path over to the bed. He was already breathing like he did when he slept, lips moving somewhat and with an uneven exhalation, like an extremely diluted version of sleep-talking. The bed had been made in my absence and there was no way I'd be able to get him under the covers, so I just retrieved the throw from the chair and draped it over him, making sure that his feet were covered. I knew what a bitch it was to have to wake up to cold feet. It was one of the reasons I loved socks so much. They were useful in situations such as those. I pulled off my articles of clothing that would prove uncomfortable to sleep in, and slipped into my side of the bed. My head was still buzzing, this time over what Severus had said to me. I most certainly was _not_ going 'away', no matter what he chose to believe. I just needed to stop thinking about it, though. I wouldn't be getting any sleep if I dwelled on Severus' weird drunken ramblings, and sleep was what I needed the most. I cleared my mind and tried to settle on nothing at all to facilitate better slumber.

But then it began. He started to _snore_. I sat up straight in bed, twisted to my left, and glared with all my might, like he might subconsciously feel it and quit with the noise. It wasn't the oh-so-adorable rhinoceros-dreaming 'foo' noise, it was full-blown, me-style snores. Not that I know what I sound like when I snore. But I've been told it's somewhere between a lawnmower and a bull elephant. Attractive, I know. But it wasn't okay when _he _started doing it. So I did what I'd heard worked, I kicked him. Not in a spousal abuse sort of a way, there was a sheet, two blankets and a throw rug between my socked foot and his clothed leg. So it would barely have left a bruise. But I must have done it harder than I intended, for instead of him rolling over and resuming his sleep in silence, he shot bolt-upright.

"Fire torpedoes!" he cried, pointing at something over by the couch, before falling backwards and landing with a soft _whump_ on the pillows. "Where on earth did the submarine go…" he muttered, eyes half-closed as he fumbled with the throw rug that had intertwined with his feet. "What is this devil's contraption… Raphaela, your poorly-thought-out purchase is trying to kill me."

"I doubt that," I said, still sitting upright and looking down on him beatifically like some naked nymph from a Renaissance painting. I don't know why I was doing it, or for whose benefit, but damn it, I was doing it. "How is it trying to kill you exactly?"

"It's clearly choking me. Except… it has reduced brain capacity, since it's a sort of blanket thingy… so it is confused. It thinks my ankles are my neck." I snorted with laughter at him, and didn't stop even when he looked at me like me and the throw rug were in it together. Who knew he had the capacity for humour? Well, my kind of humour anyway.

"You're fine," I said, pulling away the throw rug and tossing it aside. "See? I've defeated that vile beast." I leant back to recline against the pillows, now that the current threat had been eliminated.

"Indeed you have," he muttered, now fumbling at the top of the blankets. Eventually he managed to get under them and grinned like a madman before rolling onto his side to face me. "Hello," he said like a creepy crypt keeper. It really did creep me out, and I smiled after hesitating somewhat.

"Hey," I replied. I shifted over towards him and put my arm around him, stealing some of his pillows for myself. Ha! Take that. At any rate, his eyes closed and he returned the gesture, slipping one arm under my neck while the other clutched my shoulder blades like they were about to fall off. Which they weren't, as a matter of fact. There was some definite skin preventing them from dropping off me, but I still appreciated the gesture. My shoulder blades were for me alone, and if Severus was interested in helping me keep them, well, that was just very sweet of him.


	17. Morning People Redux

And we're back :D

**Chapter Seventeen: Morning People Redux**

My eyelids fluttered open in a way that would have been very endearing and picturesque, were it not for the fact that I probably had about six metric tonnes of sleep under my eyes and drool on my cheek. Ew. At any rate, a check of the bedside clock confirmed that it was half past six and Severus was still snoozing, both arms encircling me. He must have gotten extremely drunk the night before, if he couldn't even wake up in the way that he had been for at least the past year. I prodded him in the chest, but he just made a noise that sounded suspiciously like 'fuh-fuh' and kept sleeping. I grinned to myself, stifling a giggle. If waking up to this was what was going to happen for the next Merlin knew how long, I was all for it. He could be so… dare I say it? Adorable. Sometimes. When he wasn't conscious. I poked him again. This time, he made a 'mrrph' noise and batted my hand away, in the process retracting one of his arms from its rightful place around me. I would not stand for this. I poked him again, harder this time.

"Merlin, woman, keep your bony fingers to yourself," he muttered, eyes still closed. I grimaced.

"Not until you tell me what you were talking about last night," I said resolutely. His eyes clenched shut before reluctantly opening. He didn't say anything for a while, just stared at me with that piercing glare of his.

"I was entirely convinced that you had gotten bored with… with me," he said, barely moving. I glared at him.

"And why would you be entirely convinced of that?"

"Perhaps because you have been avoiding me like the plague for the past week," he said. I gaped and made an extremely indignant noise.

"I have _not_," I said. "And I challenge you to prove it, you vile fiend."

He raised an eyebrow. "The times you were away with that horrific woman, to start."

"Lucindy is not horrific," I said, folding my arms the best way I could when I was lying on my side. "She's _lovely_."

"Difference of opinion," he said with a grimace. "Then you start to spend all of your time in your old quarters. What do you suggest I think when you begin going to all lengths to be away from… to be away?"

"_Actually_," I began, starting to defend myself without even thinking about what he'd said. Why _had _I wanted to spend so much time up at my old place? It wasn't because it held any kind of sentimental value for me. The only thing I _really_ liked about Hogwarts was Severus. Then I remembered what I'd said to Ana when I got up there for the first time in months. I was escaping. More to the point, I was escaping from Severus. But why? "Actually, I was avoiding you because of what you _acted_ like on Monday morning."

"Raphaela… I've informed you that I didn't intend to get as irate as I did." Yes, well, that was all well and good for _him_, wasn't it?

"I know," I said, closing my eyes. "I know that you love me. And that you'd never do anything to hurt me. But the way you were getting… all angry and yelling… I don't know. It was the first time since we got together that I've actually been really, properly scared of you."

"Scared?" he repeated, looking somewhat confused and mildly horror-stricken. "You know that I wouldn't -"

"Yes, I know," I muttered. "But you're intimidating even when you're not mad. I felt like you could've done anything in that state."

He replaced his arm where it had been only minutes previous and held me so tightly I might've asphyxiated from it. "Never," he muttered in my ear. "I would never, and I will never."

The warm feeling that began spreading through me at those words gave me the uncontrollable impulse to grin like an idiot, and grin I did. I mean, I knew that he wouldn't, but it was still so lovely to hear it. "It's entirely possible that I love you more than anyone has any right to love anything," I said, still in my stupid grin-state. "You should know that I have absolutely no intention of leaving you for… what was it that you called it? Pastures that are of a more verdant hue." Severus made an embarrassed noise by my ear and I grinned even wider. "Though, there _is_ a new barista down at that coffee shop in Hogsmeade. He's pretty cute, y'know. I might run away to Romania with him and start a family of gypsies that will rob unsuspecting tourists to fund mama's developing drug habit."

"Not funny," he said, but I could tell in his voice that he wasn't really mad. "I'm entirely certain that your jokes aren't amusing to anyone but yourself."

"But that's all that matters, yes?" I queried.

"Not at all," he said, and I could hear something of a smile in his voice even though seeing it would have been beyond weird for me. "I think you'll find that my amusement is the only factor of concern in this arrangement."

"Then you'd better start appreciating wiener jokes," I muttered. "Because that is my most valuable export."

"Of course it is," I heard softly in my ear. Yes, I was quite sure that he and I were going to be okay. Even if I was as flighty as he was irritable, everything would work itself out.


	18. Morning People on Certain Holidays

In the year that this fic was set (yes it has a year, and it's 2001, _by the by_) Halloween was a Wednesday. However, J K Rowling didn't adhere to year dates (she is obviously not as obsessive about accuracy as I am) and by virtue of Her Holiness' precedent, Halloween is on a Saturday and THAT IS FINAL. Not that anyone was keeping score, or would call me out on it. But _I_ know that it's not right. And so should you all.

Oh, and there's a teeny tiny reference to one of my favourite movies in this chapter. Just lettin' y'all know.

**Chapter Eighteen: Morning People on Certain Holidays**

Ah, Halloween. The night that everybody dresses up and it's very fun and lovely and did I mention I love, love, _love_ Halloween? There just weren't enough opportunities for a grown adult to wear a costume these days. Of course, I'd had _my_ costume picked out since _last_ Halloween. I confess, I'd gotten my inspiration from my very own overgrown bat (who was at that time not _my_ overgrown bat, just an overgrown bat who happened to work with me) and decided, yes, next year, I will be a bat for Halloween. No mention from Severus on what _he_ was going to be though. Maybe he was going to reciprocate my idea and go as a Loud Annoyance. Maybe he was going to go as a bat too, then we could be bat-twins. Then again, he was _always_ going as a bat. One thing was for sure, it was 5.45 in the morning of October thirty-first, I was already dressed in my outfit (which I was going to wear all stinking day, thank you very _much_), and it was _awesome_. I was wearing the cutest brown fuzzy kind of bustier-thingy that draped into a skirt that was a bit longer at the back and tapered to a point. I'd gotten these creepily real-looking leathery wings from a costume shop down at Hogsmeade, as well as some fangs which were charmed onto my teeth until midnight. To top it all off, I had a furry brown headband with cute bat ears on it that curved slightly at the top. I'd spent about twenty minutes trying to get the right combination of black and brown for my eye makeup, and completed the _awesome_ look with black lipstick. I was the most batlike bat in all of bat-town, and if anyone told me I wasn't, so help me I would cut them.

One thing was for sure, I was _not_ going to wait another fifteen minutes to find out Severus' costume. Of course, I had been very fastidious in keeping _my_ costume a secret from him. Halloween should be like Christmas, where you don't know what you'll get until the actual day. It should always be a surprise. Back to the matter at hand, I jumped back onto the bed and poked Severus until he stopped sleeping and opened his eyes blearily. At the sight of me, grinning like a maniac with my faux-fangs bared, he let out a small cry of surprise and sat up immediately.

"Merlin, Raphaela, what on earth do you think you're doing? You look like a murderer."

"I'm a bat! Duh!" I said condescendingly, still grinning maniacally. "What are _you_ going to be for Halloween?"

"Excuse me?" he said, still not fully awake, obviously. He didn't realise that it was _Halloween morning_ and it was okay to divulge your costume secrets when the day was upon you. "I will do no such thing."

"Yes, you will!" I said, though I could feel my smile fading. He _was_ going to dress up, wasn't he? He did last year, didn't he? I cast my mind back to the previous year's Halloween. I had gone as a saucy wench from pirate times, I remember that much, but what was he? Then it hit me, I remembered. Him saying something like 'Vialle, you look ridiculous. Take that corset off and act like a professional, for Merlin's sake.' Then me saying something like 'My, professor, you'll have to take me out before you can expect _that_ from me.' Then probably some yelling. There was always yelling. That was a dark time. I didn't mind it though, I got to annoy someone, and that was always worth a bit of being-yelled-at.

"I most certainly will not," Severus replied, jerking me out of my stupor.

"Yeah," I whined.

"No."

"Yeah?"

"No."

"Come _on_."

"No."

"Fine," I said, folding my arms and turning away in a mock-huff. "I'll just go as a bat all alone and everyone will say, look at her, her husband obviously doesn't love her, because he's not dressed up and she is. They are part of a _broken_ _home_. That is what they will say."

"They will not," he replied. He moved over and put an arm around me, causing my folded arms to fall at my sides at the ration of affection I was receiving. It was probably all I was going to get for the next week, I had to try and make it count. "They'll just talk about how… excellent you look in that dress." I was hitting the affection _jackpot_. His hesitations before saying something that would imply anything other than apathy were growing smaller by the day. Soon I'd have him trained to compliment me on demand, and on that day, I would be able to die a happy girl.

"You don't love me at _all_," I said. I was going to make him dress up one way or another, and if that meant that I had to emotionally blackmail him, so be it.

"You are fully aware of that statement's level of veracity," he said sternly. "I am _not_ putting on a ridiculous costume to celebrate a holiday that can barely be counted as one."

Merlin, this man's stubbornness. I'd have to hope that our children wouldn't inherit _that_, or I'd put a wand in my mouth and plaster the wall with my brains. Wait, why did I even think that? There would be absolutely no talk of inheriting anything, because there will be no children ever and _that is final_. "Shutup!" I cried, more to myself than to him, but from the way he glared at me I guessed that he thought I meant him. "None of that. I mean… Halloween… it's a very respected holiday. Very… uh, very good. Very holiday-like. And you should respect the tenets of this holiday which is totally a holiday."

"I will do no such thing," he said. Well, if there was one thing to be said about Raphaela Vialle, it was that I do not back down from a challenge. Or that I'm a drunken floozy. I prefer the former.


	19. Costumery

You have no idea how long it took me to think of the word 'volition' in this chapter. I was like, 'fruition… tuition… munition…' I even tried misspelling some of those words so that the word I was thinking of might come up in spellcheck, but THERE ARE NO FREE RIDES IN MICROSOFT WORD. Anyway, appreciate the volition. Also WHO KNEW the word 'crotchety' had that first t. I thought it was crochety. I wish it was crochety, that way it sounds less like levels of crotchness. Though maybe crochety would be more to do with crocheting. I don't know.

**Chapter Nineteen: Costumery**

Well, it was amazing what an entire day of constant nagging will do to one's dedication to a cause. In this situation, the cause of not wearing a costume on Halloween. Obviously. Anyway, before it was even dusk, I'd worn him down and he agreed that he might consider doing something, but not until the staff Halloween celebration at eight. By the time seven rolled around, I was lounging about, reading magazines in front of the fire and occasionally tossing my hair in a very annoyed-diva sort of a way. Severus, meanwhile, was showering in the bathroom. If it wasn't for my awesome Halloween costume and the unbelievable amount of time it took me to get it together that morning, so help me, I would have jumped the hell out of him right there. I was feeling very pleasant towards everything, for some reason. The magazine I was reading was telling me something like, seven ways to lose x amount of stone, whatever. It was marginally interesting, and the only reason I was reading it was because Severus was otherwise occupied and I didn't exactly have anything else to fill my time with. After what seemed like an eternity reading articles that were calling me fat, I heard the faucets turn off and minutes later, Severus emerged from the bathroom, towel around his waist and hair already dried. I smiled at him.

"I know that look," he said warily. "_That_ means that our time at the Halloween celebration will be cut short in favour of less dull pursuits."

"That is _so_ not what that means," I argued. Well, he had me on the look, just not tonight. I wanted to make the most of this Halloween party. Halloween only came once a year and I was going to enjoy it, damn it. "Even if you do look completely edible when you're half-nekkid like that. Besides, you still have to put on your _cos-tuuuuuuuume!_"

"Don't do that again, you sound ridiculous. Besides, I don't even _have _a costume." He looked at me triumphantly, like he'd somehow _won_ just because he didn't think ahead. Well, too bad for him, I did. Think ahead, that is.

"I got extra wings. We'll be _bat-twins!_" I was so excited, I almost shrieked the last part, but held it in so that Severus wouldn't fear for my sanity. Well, any more than he already was, but still. He rolled his eyes at me.

"How much do you want me to do this?" he asked wearily. This was it. I'd got him. He was _considering it._

"So very much," I said excitedly, leaping on the opportunity. He let out the most over-exaggerated, martyr-like sigh I had ever heard in my life, ever, and then looked at me like he was being tortured.

"Fine. I will wear your stupid wings. But I am telling everyone there that you coerced me into doing it and that I would never do anything like that of my own volition."

"Sure, do that," I said, still grinning like a maniac. "But then everyone will know how much you totally love me and that you'd dress in a costume just because it'd make me happy."

"Perhaps I will reconsider," he said lightly, "and just not tell them anything."

One application of bat-wings and a makeup touch-up later (makeup for me, obviously. I don't think we were at the point where Severus would let me come near him with a stick of eyeliner yet), we were on our way to the staff celebration. Severus had complained all the way through the bat-wing application, but damn it, it was our first Halloween together, and I'd wanted to do the joint Halloween costume thing with someone ever since Andy and Lacy had dressed as zombie-girl and zombie-boy back in '89, in our sixth year. Sure, I'd grown up, and realised the costume-twin thing was just so completely uncool, but damn it, if I said I was going to do something, I damn well did it. I was just committed like that, no matter what Severus chose to believe about my levels of commit-ness.

Finally we arrived in the staff room and saw that the Halloween celebration was just beginning. McGonagall, dressed as a cat, was chatting with Hagrid, who was dressed as either a blood-sucking bugbear or a giant chizpurfle. It was hard to tell with Hagrid sometimes. The punchbowl was nearly full, but that didn't mean much. I remembered the last staff party I'd been to, a year and some months ago, where the punchbowl seemed to magically refill itself. It did not facilitate my soberness well, but then again, not much did. Remembering Severus' attitude towards my drunken behaviour, I did not head for the punch at once, but instead wandered over to McGonagall and Hagrid.

"Hi!" I said cheerily, and they both turned and smiled at once. "I'm a bat!"

"Very nice," McGonagall said, looking somewhat amused. "And Severus is?"

"A bat," he said, sounding morbidly morose. He lifted his arms so that the wings were fully visible. "Isn't it just _batty_."

I snorted. "Batty?" I couldn't stop laughing, really. "This is why I married this man. The puns." Hagrid was chuckling in his insanely large way, and even McGonagall was grinning broadly. "Look at my fangs, aren't they just the awesomest?" I said excitedly, baring my teeth for McGonagall and Hagrid. They nodded appreciatively.

"Seen mine?" Hagrid asked, showing me the row of fangs that he'd charmed onto himself. It really was a sight.

"So you _are_ a blood-sucking bugbear," I said triumphantly. "I didn't know if you were that or a chizpurfle."

"Nope, bugbear," Hagrid replied. "They haven' been attackin' any o' the school animals lately, though' I'd tempt fate." I let out a laugh as Severus continued to stand uncomfortably next to me. I decided to relieve him of his horrific awkwardness.

"Would you care to join me in a trip to the far-off land of chair, with a layover in punchbowl?" I asked, smiling in a way I hoped was pacifying. He looked at me oddly for a moment before shifting his head in the slightest of nods.

I took some punch into a prettily patterned glass before selecting a navy vinyl chair and sitting upon it. It was only after I'd begun my descent into sitting that I realised it was the same chair that I'd been sitting on when I first spoke to Severus. Well, aside from school-times, when I was too young to realise that my Potions professor was the most amazingly wonderful man in the world.

"Hey," I said, turning to him. He'd taken a seat beside me and looked quite silly holding the dainty little glass in his hand. "This is where we first met."

He looked bewildered for a moment before responding. "Aside from the… well, you were a _student_…"

"I know." I smiled beatifically at him. I felt, once more, that I was some kind of renaissance painting in my beatific-ness. It was kind of distracting. "Still, though. Bet you didn't think _then_ that you'd end up married to me."

"I must agree with you on that point," he admitted. "The only thing I thought about _you_ was that you were just another irritation to be dealt with. A completely mad irritation who kept zoning out when I would make attempts to ask you a question."

"I didn't zone out _that_ much," I said defensively, taking a drink of punch. Mmm. Fruity.

"You've done it four times since we arrived," he replied. Well, he was either lying or he'd been extremely attentive. It was probably the former, knowing him.

"Hey!" I said, turning to smile at him. "Want to know what I thought of _you_?"

"I get the feeling you're going to tell me either way."

"Of course I am," I grinned. "I thought you were _exactly_ like I remembered, and that it was my solemn duty in life to annoy you more than anyone has been annoyed by anyone in the history of forever."

"Consider your duty fulfilled," he muttered. "What do you mean, exactly like you remember?"

"Crotchety old bat," I grinned. "Cruel for the sake of cruel."

"Is that correct?" he asked mildly. I nodded vigorously, still smiling. He looked somewhat annoyed with my evaluation, but it didn't matter. This was Halloween night, I was _finally_ doing a costume-twins thing (fulfilling my dream of the past twelve years), and there was _neverending punch_. It seemed like the night couldn't possibly get any better, but that was disproved for me when we retired to the dungeons for, as Severus put it, 'less dull pursuits'. Less dull indeed.


	20. Regarding the Other Shoe

Thanks to all who've reviewed, you guys make my day. Seriously, you're so sweet.

**Chapter Twenty: Regarding the Other Shoe and its Ability to Remain Airborne**

Everything was suddenly perfect. I was finally doing my dream job, even if children had to be involved. I couldn't help but think 'oh, wow' whenever I thought about Severus and how lovely he was. And I had the prettiest shoe collection this side of Wales. Not that I knew of anyone else's shoe collections, or their proximity to me or Wales. But the point was, everything was just… perfect, really, which was why I was waiting with bated breath (figuratively speaking) for the other shoe to drop. And drop it did, though it was really more of a semi-trip than a full-blown drop. About six weeks or so after Halloween, I received an owl from my parents in London.

_Dearest Raphaela, _(my mum still titled letters like it was the fifties or something)

_How are you? I never know because you don't write as often as your father and I would like. We've been talking, and we've decided that you're not spending another Christmas cooped up in that musty old castle. You've probably got blacklung from it already. Your father says that one does not get blacklung from castles. I'm still sure your lungs are of a very unnatural colour and you should be spending as little time as possible at that place. So you're coming to London and staying at the house with us. Please give notice before you apparate so we can make sure that the cat isn't in a place where you can land on him. Remember what happened last time._

_Love from your mother (who is incidentally suffering because she never gets to see her only daughter)._

_P.S. Your father is extremely adamant that I not put any ideas in your head about the state of your lungs. He is making me write that your lungs are fine._

_P.P.S. Your husband is invited too._

So _that_ was all Severus warranted on a letter from my mother, an _afterthought_. You'd think since she was so eager for me to get knocked up, she'd be more hospitable to the one who'd be _doing_ the knocking – actually, I might just stop that thought right there. I'd be offended for him if I weren't all in a tizz about Christmas. Wait, in a tizz? Sweet Merlin, I was turning into my mother. Well, I supposed that I should broach the subject of it to Severus, see if he'd be at all receptive to the idea of spending an extended amount of time with my parents. We'd been at breakfast when the post came, and I'd read my letter with an expression of growing horror all the way down to the dungeons. We finally made it down there, and he looked at me with mild interest as I closed the door behind me and brandished the letter like a sword.

"They say I have to go back for the Christmas break," I said miserably. "Do you know how difficult they are to live with? How I barely survived summer there? This is going to be _awful_."

"You'll survive somehow," Severus said, moving towards me to put a hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah, well they invited you too," I said in a very annoyed sort of way. He paled and assumed the appearance of one on death row.

"Is it… mandatory?"

"No," I pouted. "You get to stay here and do whatever you like, while I have to suffer through talk of impregnation from my mother and hints to leave you from my father. _Who am I supposed to follow the directions of?_ Answer me _that_."

Severus looked very much like he was trying to keep a straight face. "The clear answer is to do both," he said seriously. "Or, you could ponder that very question in the time you'll have at your parents' house."

"And you're not coming with me?" I sulked.

"Negative."

"Fine. I'll just have to occupy myself with the guy that my father's always trying to set me up with. He's a curse-breaker, you know."

Severus rolled his eyes. "I'm sure you will." What was the world coming to? I couldn't even manipulate Severus into doing what I wanted because _he_ had discovered that I would never actually leave him. Stupid smart husband. Why couldn't I have married a simpleton? I walked away from him with a withering glare and sat down heavily at the writing desk to formulate a reply to my mother's borderline unstable letter.

_Dear Mum and Dad,_

_I'm doing fine. Everything is fine, and the reason I don't write to tell you that everything is fine is because it would get boring and repetitive. You should just assume that everything is always fine. Dad is right, you don't get blacklung from castles. You get it from mining, or something. I don't know. Last Christmas was okay, I just hung out with Severus, and OH LOOK AT THAT, NOW WE'RE MARRIED. Only good things come out of spending holidays in castles. Nevertheless, I'm sure it will be lovely to spend Christmas at your place. I'll be there at around five on Saturday. I'll apparate into the living room, so make sure Henry is shut in one of the bedrooms. Wouldn't want to land on him again, right?_

_Love, Raphaela_

_P.S. I am fully aware that I do not actually have blacklung, but thank you Dad anyway for ensuring Mum doesn't fill my impressionable head with nonsense._

_P.P.S. Severus has declined your gracious invitation with the deepest regrets._


	21. Regarding Shoes and their Disguising

Yo dudes. ENJOY :)

**Chapter Twenty-One: Regarding Shoes and their Disguising of Sea Urchins**

Well, I never thought it would come to this. Back in the room I'd grown up in, with the wallpaper I'd picked out when I was eight. Lying on my stomach in the bed I always got insomnia from, chin resting on my folded arms. The initials of my fifth year boyfriend carved in a heart on my headboard. The bright moonlight was coming in through the blue mesh curtains I'd chosen as a ten-year-old who'd grown out of pink. The black alarm clock that had inexplicably kept working since 1983 told me that it was a quarter to twelve. Criminy, and it was a _Saturday, _for Merlin's sake. I should have been awake, sitting by the fire with Severus at Hogwarts. Well, he'd be sitting, I'd be lying on my side with my head in his lap, asking him questions that I _knew_ would annoy him since he was _trying_ to read, Raphaela, do you not understand the concept of silence? But I couldn't occupy all my time with thoughts of Severus. I was going to have to spend two lousy weeks without him, with only my stupid parents for company. Dumb Christmas, what did it ever do for me? Nothing, that's what.

Well, my clock showed one, and I was still awake. Same thing happened for two and three, and then tiredness must have taken over because the next conscious thought I had was to throttle my father as he woke me up at nine. Of course, I'd been _trained_ by Severus to wake up at six, but I'd forced myself to go back to sleep. If there was one thing that I could gain from this time spent away from him, it was being able to sleep in.

"Mrrrph," I said loudly and angrily as I pulled the covers over my head. "Go 'way. I'm _sleepy_."

"Get up, Raphaela," my father said in his deep voice. "Your sleeping til noon may have been all well and good for a sixteen-year-old, but you are an adult now."

I sat up straight and pushed the blankets down to my hips. "Well, I'm an adult who is sleeping in a single bed in her parents' house, so I think I should be allowed to act like a kid if I _want_." He frowned at me and left the room, and with a grumble I kicked the blankets off so that they fell from the foot of the bed and lay in a heap. "Stinkin' parents," I said, pouting as I took a dressing gown from the hook on the back of my door and padded barefoot down to the kitchen. My mother was cooking something on the stove, and I just caught the back of my father as he went into the lounge room. No doubt he'd sit in a recliner and read the paper for about six years. Damn stereotypes.

"Oh good, you're up," my mother said cheerily. "I've got the Andersens coming around for brunch in half an hour. What are you going to wear?"

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Only my underpants, and they will be on my head." She glared right back at me. "These Andersens wouldn't be the ones with the marvellously successful curse-breaker son that Dad's always trying to get me to leave Severus for, would they?"

"Oh, I haven't time to mess around in inter-family politics like that," she said breezily. "I've got you a nice new dress you can wear, anyway."

The 'nice new dress' turned out to be a hideous cream number that seemed to be made of crepe paper turned into fabric, with a hemline around my knees and straps so wide they'd intimidate an elephant. No, I would not be wearing that to 'brunch'. Who does brunch anyway? Last time I checked, my parents were not gay men. Or were they? I'd never really asked them before. "Mum," I called out as I rifled through my trunk for something to wear, "are you and Dad really gay men in disguise?"

"What?" she yelled back from downstairs. "I can't hear you dear, you'll have to come down here."

"I can't do that, I'm not wearing any pants," I yelled back.

"What?"

Well, that was unproductive. I'd put that down as a 'maybe'. In the end, I found a black miniskirt that I hadn't worn in about five years that would surely horrify my father, and paired it with a dark blue sweater. I went back downstairs, trying to finger-comb my hair so I could give the impression of having woken up earlier than ten minutes beforehand, and sat on the bench while my mother continued to utilise her culinary skills.

"Oh really Rapha, aren't you going to put shoes on?" she said, using a nickname she hadn't used in about fifteen years. I'd have to see if she did it again, though I hoped she wouldn't. It made me feel like an elephant, to be honest. "You can't walk around barefoot, you look like an urchin."

"A sea urchin?" I asked excitedly, as I extended my hands to poke her. "Look at all my spikes. They're venomous. You're going to have to go to the hospital because you used a poor word choice." She just looked at me in a very tortured, martyr-like way, and I had to titter behind my hand to prevent a guilting. Her guilt trips could strike down a harp seal. Wait, were they the big ones? Or the small ones? Were seals particularly resilient anyway? Well, her guilt trips could strike down something that was very big and resilient.

In order to avoid this, I went upstairs and donned shoes so that the Andersens wouldn't think my mother had found a girl off the street and paid her to pretend to be a properly functioning member of society. They might think that anyway, but the important thing was that it could not be blamed on my lack of footwear. I'd just gotten back down to the kitchen and sat on the bench once more (to show off my ability to follow directions to my mother, of course) when the doorbell rang. My mother, putting the finishing touches on a quiche, called out to my father to get it, and told me to go and be a gracious host. Gracious host my eye. The Andersens would be lucky to get out of here alive.


	22. Brunch

Hey yeah, so it's passing The Point Where The Other Rapaela Stories Ended. And we're not even halfway done yet. Yeah, that's right bitches, this is going to go on for another bajillion more chapters and THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. Bam.

**Chapter Twenty-Two: Brunch**

By the time I got to the front door, my father had just finished taking everyone's coats and hats. Mr. and Mrs. Andersen looked eerily like my parents. Mr. Andersen had somehow psychically matched my father and wore a shirt, tie, and neutral-coloured sweater with beige pants. What was it about getting old that magically made men into walking Southcape commercials? And Mrs. Andersen pretty much looked like she was just itching to tell her son what to do, who himself looked like a younger version of his father. Light blue shirt and neutral-coloured vest. Yikes.

"Sup bitches?" I said loudly, grinning like a maniac as I advanced upon the Andersens. I heard a tiny squeal from the kitchen, as my mother had no doubt heard my lack of decorum and was possibly having a stroke. My father did what he always does in times of crisis, he took a deep breath and blinked once.

"Er… quite," replied Mrs. Andersen. "My, Raphaela, last time I saw you, you were sixteen. Look how you've grown!"

"I'm wearing heels," I explained, somewhat stuck for something to say.

"Have you met my son, Eric?" she said desperately, pulling him in front of her as a kind of human shield against my rays of awkwardness. He himself jerked his head in my direction and smiled at me in a very dutiful way. Merlin, I hoped his parents and my father hadn't been in this 'set Raphaela up with someone she doesn't even know _even though she's married_' thing together. Just in case that was what had happened, I lifted my left hand to brush my hair out of my face and tried to make sure that the ring on my finger was extremely visible. Unfortunately, nobody's eyes flicked to the proof of my taken-ness and my state of married-ness remained (possibly) unknown.

"So Raphaela, I hear you're teaching at Hogwarts these days," Mr. Andersen said as my father and I led them to the dining room. I nodded with a smile. "And married to the old Potions Master, I hear." Well, didn't Mr. Andersen just hear _everything_. "Of course, old Slughorn was teaching Potions when _we_ were at school, wasn't he, Martin?" My father grinned broadly.

"He was! I remember…" So my father and Mr. Andersen went off to the lounge together to reminisce about old times, leaving me alone to take Eric and Mrs. Andersen to the dining room. I don't know who invented the concept of brunch but it was clearly evil. I managed somehow to get through the whole thing without any major faux pas that would make my mother guilt me later, even though I kept my left elbow on the table at all times so that casual passers-by could see my ring and know that I was married. Let's see you try to fix me up with Eric after _that_, Dad. Bloody home-wrecker.

Eric was nice enough, once we'd both gotten a couple of glasses of Shiraz into us. Turned out his mother had bought him that heinous outfit and he was just wearing it so that she wouldn't feel bad. That, in turn, made me feel like _the worst daughter in the world_ for not wearing the dress that _my_ mother had bought for _me_. Oh well, though. I'd take some feeling-bad if it meant I could lounge about in a tiny skirt and pretty shoes. After Mum had broken out the blender and brunch turned into pre-lunch margaritas in the sitting room, (half a glass of Chardonnay would do that to a Woman of Fragile Sensibilities, I had clearly inherited my father's drinking chops) Eric and I took our margaritas in the sunroom. Sweet Merlin, that sounded poncy. Barely two days back at home and I was well on the way to inviting Maaaah-garet over for scohnes and to regale me with her maaaaarvellous skills on the grahnd piahno. Not that I knew anyone called Maaaah-garet. Or baked scohnes. Or had a grahnd piahno. But I would, if I kept up this nonsense. My parents must have been putting something in the booze. Some kind of drug that turned me into Lady Vialle of the Steffordshire Estate. Wait, Steffordshire Estate? What was I even talking about anymore?

I peeled the flesh from the skin of the lime slice that adorned my cactus-shaped glass and ate it slowly, watching Henry the cat pouncing on some invisible foe outside. I'd kicked off my shoes and they lay haphazardly by the little glass table for resting drinks on. I'd surreptitiously stolen a pair of retro round sunglasses from my parents' bedroom and felt very Audrey Hepburn in them. I felt quite languid, as I lolled on a day-bed with Eric next to me reclining in a wicker chair (who had dispensed with the vest and tie, since his mother was 'too drunk to care'), sipping my margarita.

"So, live around here?" I asked finally, once Henry had vanished behind the shed.

"Sort of," he replied. "Like, sort of right in the middle of London."

"Merlin, that sounds awesome," I said, rolling over on the day-bed to stare enviously at him. "I live in a dungeon." He snorted, cracking up with laughter and not ceasing for a couple of minutes. It wasn't _that_ funny.

"Oh, Raphaela, if you could hear my parents talking about you," he said finally, looking at me like he was in on some big joke that I wasn't privy to. I didn't like it one bit. "Every day, it's all, the Vialles' daughter this, the Vialles' daughter that. Sometimes I think they should just adopt you and get it over with."

"I haven't talked to them in twelve years," I said incredulously. "Do they really like me?"

"They hear stuff from your parents," he explained. "_I_ hear stuff from your parents. They like to talk you up a lot."

"Well, I'm not very good, so don't believe a word of it," I said, grinning. "Oops, my drink's all gone. Back in a tic."

I stood up on legs wobblier than I'd anticipated and wandered through to the kitchen. The blender was gone, and by the laughter I heard from the sitting room, it was in there, with the tequila and the margarita mix. Fortunately, I knew where my parents kept their stash, and I was on my way back to the sunroom with the backup tequila and a couple of shot glasses in no time. Eric was kind of fun, really. It was weird that my parents and his parents were so close, but he and I had never met.

"I brought supplies," I said triumphantly as I re-entered the sitting room. Eric had been staring lazily outside at Henry, who had started attacking nothing again. When I entered, he sat up straight, lowered his head, and looked at me very seriously.

"Let's rock."

* * *

A/N: Bam! Originally I had them lounging out on the lawn with margaritas and junk but then I realised HURR IT'S NOVEMBER AND APPARENTLY IT GETS COLD IN BRITAIN IN NOVEMBER, WHO KNEW. Sunroom woo!


	23. Possibly

It has been a bit longer than usual between chapters, and for that I am SOWWY :( seriously though how fun are costume parties? All parties should be costume parties I think. I didn't dress up as a bat but that's okay. We'll get them next time. AND SERIOUSLY YOU DUDES ARE SO NICE TO ME, you will give me a big head if you're not careful. But I'm not saying you should stop. Oh no. CONTINUE TO BE NICE TO ME PLEASE.

Anyway no more nonsensical tangents, enjoy the chapter!

**Chapter Twenty-Three: Possibly**

When I awoke, there was darkness all around. The day-bed that had been so comfortable for lounging proved to be extremely bad for neck alignment, and I felt something crunch in there as I tried to put it back to where it was supposed to be. A green loose-knit throw rug had been draped over me, and as I stood up and looked around me, I realised I was still in the sunroom. I remembered… well, Eric and I had been having a rather pleasant time with our tequila, and the last thing I remembered was remarking how comfortable the day-bed was as I stared out at the indigo sky. I took a step towards the doorway and stumbled slightly, and realised I must still be quite drunk. Somehow, I managed to get up to my room without breaking any bones, and only walking into three chairs on the way. Smooth. I collapsed onto my bed and didn't even bother taking my bra off before sleep overcame me once more.

Nobody woke me up the next day, but I did it myself at ten. I pulled off what I'd been wearing the day before and donned pyjama pants and a t-shirt before going downstairs to forage for food. It turned out I didn't need to forage for long, as my mother was cooking, as usual. I made a whining noise at her in a way I hoped conveyed my sheer appreciation for everything she'd ever done and would do, if only she would get me some bacon. She sent a grunt back in my direction and I took that to mean that she would indeed get me some bacon, and thank you. My father was moaning very quietly at the table, head in his fingertips as it hovered over the newspaper that he might just be sick in. Ah, a family united in a joint hangover. Was there anything more beautiful?

Once all three of us had bacon, eggs and toast in front of us to begin our recovery, my mother looked at me in a very no-nonsense way. I supposed she wasn't in the mood for nonsense. "Raphaela. What are you going to do about _insemination_."

"Urrrgh," my father and I said simultaneously.

"Must we?" I said dully. Ignoring my mother's look of annoyance, I began eating bacon with my fingers. It was _delicious_.

"Can you use a different word, at least?" my father pleaded as he stared into the newspaper. His eyes weren't moving.

"You've been married for almost a year now," she said.

"Actually, it's like… seven months, maybe. I don't know."

"Well, it's closer to a year than it is to zero years," she said, the thought of getting me pregnant seeming to perk her up. That was just creepy. "When are you going to have children if not now? Never?"

"That was the general idea," I muttered.

"Well, I'll have to draw you up an ovulation chart."

"Mum!"

"I _was_ top of my class for Divination, you know."

"Super."

"When did you last menstruate?"

"Carol!" my father said sharply. "Can we not talk about this while I'm eating eggs?"

"Or ever?" I said. That was a point, though. Periods were something I didn't really keep track of. When _was_ my last one? Even if it wasn't an entirely disgusting concept to be thinking about over breakfast, Mum had put it into my head and it wasn't leaving anytime soon. The week before Halloween, I think. How long ago was that? Six weeks? Seven? Wait, that doesn't seem right. Oh. Ohhhhh. Bloody hell. "Ah, Mum!" I cried, throwing down my napkin and standing up. "You jinxed it!"

"Jinxed what? Your eggs?"

"No, the stupid stinking _baby_ that I'm going to have to have, you… you jinxer! No time for eggs now, no! It's _far too late_ for any talk of _eggs_."

"What are you talking about, Rapha?" she asked. There it was again, that nickname. "Are you saying you were inseminated by my talking about it? Because I'm not sure that's possible."

"Oh, I know you were behind this," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Using your weird gypsy Divination magic on me. You've made me pregnant when I don't even want to be. This baby will be born to an unloving parent. To a _broken home_."

"You're pregnant?" my mother nearly shrieked. I pouted and crossed my arms.

"Well I might be," I said stubbornly. "I don't _know_. I probably drowned it in alcohol last night anyway. You gave a pregnant woman alcohol, now my baby's going to be born with four arms or something. You have to live with that." Before I could guilt-trip her further I was barrelled into by my mother, who knocked me to the ground in her waves of hugging. "Merlin, Mum, possibly pregnant woman, not a football player," I muttered, standing up and brushing myself off. "Now if you _don't_ mind, this possibly pregnant woman is going to take her breakfast in her room, and then she's going to have a sleep. Because I _can_ now."

I took my plate from the table, turned on my heel, and walked towards the staircase. Being possibly pregnant certainly had its advantages, and what kind of a daughter would I be if I didn't milk them? Eating for two, napping whenever I wanted? Yes, it was certainly a charmed life for the possibly pregnant of the world.


	24. Possibly Not

**Chapter Twenty-Four: Possibly Not**

I awoke from my sweet nap to a knock at my door. I yelled something groggily about sleeping for two so _leave me alone_, but whoever it was just went ahead and came in anyway. What rudeness! All my righteous indignation left me when I saw that it was Severus, though. I leapt out of bed and jumped him so fiercely he almost fell over backwards under the weight of my hug (hugging for two).

"Good afternoon," he said finally, when I let go and retreated to sit on my bed. At my indication, he took a seat next to me. "You have drool on your face." Well, that was embarrassing. I frantically rubbed it off with my forearm before smiling broadly at him. Then, I remembered what I'd realised that morning, and my stomach turned flip-flops, in a way that I was sure was extremely bad for the baby. Foetus. Embryo? Sweet Merlin, what was I going to do if it turned out I actually _was_ pregnant? I mean, I couldn't deny that the thought had crossed my mind of _maybe, possibly, someday_, but now? And with Severus? I mean, it wasn't a question of love, because I loved Severus more than I ever thought possible. But… I mean… I tried to imagine him with one of those reverse-backpack things people stuck babies in, and that image alone simultaneously made me want to laugh and beg someone, anyone, to kick me in the stomach as hard as they could. I wondered if Severus would kick me if I told him to, without asking questions?

"I have a very important question for you," I said, still feeling weird and stomach-churney. "If I needed you to kick me really hard, without telling you why, would you do it?"

He furrowed his eyebrows at me. "Of course not," he said. "Then I expect I'd have to wrap you in foam in case you repeated the request to parties who may actually carry it out."

Huh. I'd have to go to someone else first then. "I have another important question for you. What are you doing here?"

He actually looked somewhat embarrassed at this, like I'd uncovered some ghastly secret of his. "I found it to be less than pleasant when you are absent."

"Ha!" I cried loudly. "You missed me!" I delivered a low-aimed, gentle spear-tackle around his waist and hugged him as hard as his lungs would allow for as long as I saw fit. Which, in this case, was long enough for him to pat me on the back awkwardly and suggest a few times that I find a less constricting hobby. I finally relented and grinned at him, just in time for my mother to pop into the doorway holding a plastic bag.

"Oh! Hello Severus, I didn't know you were coming. So I suppose Raphaela's told y-"

"Mum!" I said very loudly, trying to communicate psychic messages to her with my eyes. _Do not say another word about what might possibly be in my stomach. Do not_.

"…Told you about the wonderful quiche I make? I served a very nice sun-dried tomato and basil one for brunch yesterday, didn't I Rapha?"

"It sure was, Mum," I said, trying to look cheerful without suspiciously so. I turned to Severus. "Hey! You like… um, watery things, right?"

"Not particularly."

"Well, you're in luck! There's this great lake thing out back, well it's not really a lake, more a pondy thing, I mean, it's smaller than a lake, but it's pretty brilliant, at this time of year it'd probably be frozen over. It's quite a sight, you should definitely go and look at it for about twenty minutes."

His eyebrows got even furrowed-er, if at all possible, and he stared at me piercingly for quite a long time before standing up and leaving the room, nodding politely to my mother as he went.

"You got my psychic message then, about not telling Severus about the possibility?" I said, feeling insanely grateful to my mother. I hated to say it, but it was a kind of foreign feeling. Now, now that I was possibly pregnant, it seemed like me and my mother against the embryo, for some reason. This was odd, since it should have been my mother and the embryo against me.

"Your what?" she asked. "Oh, you mean when you got that look like you were constipated with an anvil. I _interpreted_ it, dear. Doesn't take a psychic to do that."

Well, there went all my hopes and dreams of being psychically connected to someone. Oh well. "What's in the bag?"

"A test," she said brusquely. "Can't have any of this 'possibly' nonsense."

"Ah," I said, trying to look like it was something I'd thought of, too. "This is something I've thought of, too."

"Of course you did," she said, taking my hand like I was still a kid and leading me to the bathroom. I didn't mind, though. I was feeling very upset. What if I _was_ pregnant? Visions of babies, tiny versions of clothes, and… ugh… _maternity wear_ floated through my head. These were replaced by visions of Severus slamming the door on me, leaving me pregnant and alone and having to teach _Potions_, the fumes of which would definitely be bad for the baby. One hair-raising potion gone wrong and my baby would be born without ears, or something horrid like that. And there would be nobody to help me with sign-language. A choking sob rose up within me and embarrassingly, I started to cry right in the middle of the hallway.

"Oh, Rapha, what's wrong?" my mother said, putting her arms around me. "Here, stop crying, it'll be alright. What's gotten you so upset?"

"Severus isn't going to want a _baby_," I said in-between sobs, putting my hands to my face within my mother's iron grip around me. "He's going to leave me and I'll have to raise the baby as a _single parent_ and it's going to turn out really weird because it never had a male influence growing up and _I won't have Severus anymore_."

Perplexingly, my mother made soothing, cooing noises at me, like I myself was a baby who was screaming for no reason. "Shhh, Rapha, don't worry about that," she said. "I'm sure Severus would stay with you even if you were having twenty babies."

"_I might have twenty babies?_" I shrieked, horror-stricken. My mother looked at me like I was a dog who'd just done something that people do, like walk on its hind legs or something. It was an 'oh isn't that precious' look.

"Let's just check this one, shall we?" she said, and we walked the rest of the way to the bathroom. I was still almost paralysed with terror about what might happen to me, but thankfully I didn't burst into tears again. My mother waited dutifully outside while I… well, let's just say I sat the test. At any rate, three minutes later I was staring at the test madly, one hand clamped over one eye and my mother standing next to me with her arms folded. "Going to look at it, then?" she coaxed, clearly itching to see for herself but decorum preventing her from picking up a pee-covered stick. I loved decorum sometimes. I walked zombie-like over to it and stared at it.

"Mum," I said loudly. "_What does this mean._" I heard a sigh from behind me and my mother walked around to help me inspect it. After a moment, she spoke.

"Negative, dear. Oh well. I'll make up the guest bedroom for Severus and you can give it another shot tonight -"

"Mum!" I shouted. "If I weren't so happy, I'd insist that you cease these horrific talks before I impaled you on a spike on the front lawn, to show the neighbours what happens to people who are creepily interested in my ovaries."

"That sounds lovely, dear. I'll go get that bedroom ready."


	25. Positively Negative?

'Kay, so this is a shawty-shawty chapter. But the next bajillion will be superlong, I promises :)

**Chapter Twenty-Five: Positively Negative… or Negatively Positive. Both?**

Oh, negative. What wonders that little word held for me. Negative, negative, negative! I'd make it into a banner for my room. I'd tattoo it on my butt. I'd name my first-born after it. Actually, strike that last one, after the news I'd just got. I skipped – yes, actually _skipped_ – over to a window which showed the lake I'd instructed Severus to go and inspect. I pushed it open with gay abandon and looked out. Severus was standing by the frozen lake with my father, who was smoking a pipe. Since when did he smoke pipes? He was wearing a striped cardigan, too. Since when did my father turn into a grandfather? Oh, right, he still didn't know of the wonderful negativity.

"Hey!" I yelled from the window, ignoring the cold on my bare arms. Severus turned around and saw me half hanging out the window, waving at him. "Hey stink-head! I love you!" He looked supremely confused, but still sent a half-smile and a small inclination of the head my way before turning back to the frozen lake. My father muttered something in Severus' ear, and before I had time to process what it might have been, Severus turned his head back my way, looking horrified. Well, now I had a pretty good idea of what it might have been. Damn my father! Severus never had to know about it! And now I'd have to explain to him that I wasn't _really_ pregnant before he left me for someone who wouldn't do something as silly as think she was pregnant when she wasn't really. I ran down the stairs and thankfully had the presence of mind to put on a pair of shoes before running into the snow. I met Severus halfway to the back of the house, where he was still looking horrified.

"Okay," I said, trying to collect my thoughts. No need to scare him, Dad mightn't have said anything about that particular subject. He might have just told Severus that it gets really cold here in the winter. That was pretty horrifying in itself, and my bare arms were feeling horrified enough for all of me. A shiver went through me and I held my upper arms with the opposing hands. "What did my dad just say to you?"

He stared at me piercingly. "What is it that got you to run outside?" Damn. He'd got me on that one.

"I asked first." Ah yes, first-year rules worked every time.

"He is under the impression that you are with child."

"I'm not," I said quickly, and saw the look of horror fade away. That was always a good sign, right?

"Then why, may I ask, does he think you are?"

"Because… because…" I started, trying to make it sound as good as possible. "Because I kind of thought I was?" Well, now the horror-struck look was being replaced by one of slight horror, slight bewilderment.

"And why did you not inform me of this?"

"Because I only realised this morning," I said. "Mum kept talking about ovulation and menstruation and I realised that I hadn't in a while and I thought maybe I was but I just peed on a stick thingy and it says I'm not."

"Breathe, Rapha," he said. Okay, _why_ was he adopting my mother's stupid nickname that made me feel like an elephant? I'd have to put a stop to it as soon as this whole mess was behind us. "So why didn't you tell me just now, before you made me look at ice for twenty minutes? There is only so much entertainment to be gained from ice."

"Because you wouldn't want me to be pregnant and you'd leave me and I'd be all alone and my child would grow up without any male influence and it'd end up all weird and it's not going to have any ears and I'll have to learn sign language all by myself and you'd leave me," I said, still ignoring his advice to breathe. Well, it was silly advice. I breathed all the time, and a fat lot of good it did me.

"You're going to have to learn to separate your words from each other when you talk," he said in a gentler tone, putting his cloak around my shoulders before walking me back to the front door.

"More like _you're_ going to have to understand the things that I say without me having to alter my entire speech patterns just to suit you," I gabbled. "What do you think I am, some kind of… um… well, I didn't really think that one through. But the important thing is that… uh… okay, let's just pretend I've been saying very clever and poignant things and you're very impressed."

"Consider it done," Severus muttered, looking down at me with a weird expression on his face. I hadn't really seen it before, it was some kind of beatific benevolence, like I sometimes assumed. It was incredibly weird on him and I really wished he'd go back to being grumpy. Oh well, though. That was the price you pay for marrying someone like him.


	26. As They Fall From the Sky

Yeah, the title of this chapter is another Reference. Now I think about it, all the References so far have been to the same band. Huh. HOW ABOUT THAT. Anyway I'm so dead-tired I wrote 'chapter of this chapter' but I can't go to bed because I have to write an essay and PAY THEM FOR THE PRIVELEGE OF THIS CLASS I'M TAKING. It doesn't even make any sense! WHY WOULD I PAY SOMEONE TO MAKE ME DO THINGS. I HATE DOING THINGS. Um... here's the chapter.

**Chapter Twenty-Six: As They Fall From the Sky**

Dinner that night was very strange. Severus, being his usual weirdly aloof self, didn't really say much, but my father kept talking to him about coming back in the summertime. Well, that was a weird transformation from my father. I was under the impression that he hated Severus. Though, it did go a bit far when he suggested that he and Severus go out on the lake when the ice melted to _fish_, for Merlin's sake. The image of Severus in those plastic overall things and a beige hat with fishing lures on it made me snort my wine so violently my mother thought I was having a stroke. But it was my mother's constant talks of children and pregnancy and things Of That Nature that was the driving force behind my decision to chug wine until the Bad Things went away. There was only so much one's mind could be weighed down by thoughts of uterus parasites before it all got too much, and that moment had occurred about four hours before dinner. I did _not_ need to hear another word about ovulation or trimesters or, horror of horrors, _my own conception_. There were some things that you just shouldn't talk about.

After dinner, Severus politely declined an invitation from my father to adjourn to the sitting room and discuss 'old times' (what old times? _WHAT OLD TIMES?_) and he and I ended up, oddly enough, in the sunroom. It had just gone about nine-ish, so it'd been pitch black for about three and a half hours, but it was still nice to hang out in there and look at the stars. Of course, you had to have all the lights off to even _see_ anything outside, so it wasn't so much a sunroom as just a regular room made of windows. Sunroom took less time to say though. I was on the daybed again (even though it was night-time! The scandal!), lying on my back this time so that the incline at one edge wouldn't make my neck fall off. Severus was perched oddly in a large, round chair that was pushed against the right wall, so he was further down and to the left of my feet. He could probably see up my nose, but who cared? It was night-time. Boogers are invisible at night, it's their superpower. I'd drawn my knees up slightly, the left a bit higher than the right, and angled them towards each other so they wouldn't go falling over. I was the body part architect. Like making a house of cards, but less fragile. I probably wouldn't have fallen apart at the slightest breath of wind.

It was really very pleasant, lying back and watching the stars. I'd fix my eyes on what looked like the brightest, then it seemed to fade in front of my face and the one next to it would light up. It was interesting, trying to predict which would be brightest next. Every so often a star would flit across the sky and vanish, but I never had the time to think up a wish to use on it before it was gone. Whatever though. It may have sounded twee, but I had everything I could ever want already. It was creepy, though, how completely motionless Severus was. Every time I glanced over at him his eyes were fixated on me, and he was still sitting in the exact same position. It was like he didn't even _realise _how pretty the stars were.

"Look at the stars," I said, reaching an arm up to point lazily. "They're very nice."

"I'm quite sure that they are," was all he said, and remained motionless.

This pleasant nonsense continued for Merlin knew how long, before the lights snapped on and I called a grumbling cry as the brightness assaulted my eyes. I rolled over on the daybed, forgetting how narrow it was, and landed hard on my knees. "Ouch!" I said loudly, before looking up to glare at whoever had interrupted my gazing. It was my mother.

"Eric's just called, he thinks he left his vest here last night," she said. "I told him to pop by. You two were in here, weren't you? Do you know where it is?"

I shrugged, casting my eyes about the room in a half-assed sort of a way. They caught on something beige that was poking out from behind a cushion and I motioned toward the chair that he'd been sitting in. My mother wandered over and retrieved it, folding it in a very motherly sort of a way. The doorbell rang and she smiled. "That'll be him. Fancy leaving a _vest_."

"I'll take it," I said to her, and she relinquished it to me. I sort of jogged through the sitting room and kitchen to get to the front entrance, and I pulled the door open with a smile. Eric was standing there, looking a lot more normal in a t-shirt and jeans. "Hi!"

"Hey Raph," he said, smiling. "I thought I could get away with this reckless abandonment, but I came to my senses and realised it was just too cruel to force that horrible vest onto your otherwise lovely house."

I laughed. "Oh, it was just adding to the décor, really. D'you want to come in for a bit?"

"I would, but I should be getting back," he said, and it sounded quite apologetic. I'd only asked to be polite. "It's pretty late, after all."

"Okay, cool," I said. "Well, come around again before I go back to school. I'm only here for the Christmas break."

"Sure thing," he said, before turning away. I shut the door behind him and meandered back to the sunroom, but it was empty. I turned the lights off, took one last look at the stars, and left the room.


	27. The Neverending Dialogue

Look at this! All this dialogue! WHERE IS THE MONOLOGUEING? WHERE IS THE INCESSANT COMPARISONS TO LETTERBOXES? NEVERENDING MONOLOGUE, COMING SOON.

**Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Neverending Dialogue**

Severus was in the guest bedroom, the first place I'd looked for him. I shut the door behind me and went over to hug him tightly. The room itself was quite nice, even if it was somewhat bland. White walls, large windows, starchy white curtains, chocolate-brown carpet. The bedspread was so white and crease-free it looked practically painted on, and I cursed my mother's domestic talents. Not only were they far better than mine, making me look bad in comparison, but I almost didn't want to get into the bed, since it'd ruin it. I overcame that hurdle, though. Severus looked at me oddly as he joined me.

"You're sleeping here?" he asked. What kind of a question was that? Of course I was.

"Yeah," I said as I turned off the wood-and-canvas bedside lamp, the room's only source of light. "I can't sleep in my old room, anyway. _And_ I really like being with you. Haven't you noticed that?"

"Affirmative," he said. Very serious. "So who is this Eric?"

I started to say 'Oh, he's just a guy', before I realised that that was the _exact_ phrase I used to describe my boyfriends to my mother back in school days. "He's the son of some friends of my parents. They live a couple of houses down. He was around here yesterday. We got pretty pissed, it was awesome." My eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness yet, and I couldn't see Severus' facial expression, but I could assume what he was thinking. "And… he's really ugly. Got a hunchback. And he smells. And he's only got one leg. And his hair is really unpleasant."

"That's not true, Rapha," he said.

"Okay, one, you've never met him, two, you're right anyway, and three, stop calling me that. It makes me feel like an elephant."

"Noted."

"Are you mad at me?"

"Never."

"Even though I got completely munted with a young, single, extremely attractive man who my parents are in love with?"

"Even though you did that."

"Excellent." I moved closer towards him in the dark but didn't put my arms around him as I usually would have. "Tired?"

"No."

"You know what's awesome? Monosyllabic answers."

I heard him shift slightly and let out a barely audible sigh. "You shouldn't be like this."

"You know I hate it when you say things like that, knowing _full well_ I don't know what you're talking about." Well, he might not have known it. But now he did.

"It's as if you're stuck in a time loop starting at sixteen and ending at nineteen. People your age don't act like you act."

"Then they're not trying hard enough."

"I'm serious, Raphaela," he said, and I shutup for once. "Even if you didn't have the sense of humour of a thirteen-year-old."

"When I was thirteen I laughed at owls pooping on people's heads at breakfast."

"You still do that."

"My point exactly."

"Mine, actually."

"Well, so what?" I said defensively. I crossed my arms as I was lying on my side, even though he probably couldn't see it. "Being seventeen was _awesome_. It was the most fun ever. What's it to you if I want to stay that way?" I was just starting to see moonlight come through the breaks in the curtains and I could make out Severus' dark outline against the white sheets.

"You're twenty-eight years old," he said. "People should change in ten years, and I shouldn't be introducing you as 'the one lying under the table, singing Highway to the Danger Zone'."

"Don't you like me like I am?" I said. He sighed in an exasperated, annoyed sort of way.

"Did I not marry you?"

"Point taken." I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. In my old room, I would've seen a plethora of glow-in-the-dark stars and moons surrounding the light fixture. It was just darkness in this room. "You don't help though, being all old and crotchety. Maybe I _have_ to act stupid to balance you out."

"Old and crotchety?" He sounded incredulous.

"Yeah, why don't you just sit out on the porch in a rocking chair with a shotgun, yelling at kids to get off your damn lawn." He snorted at this, and even I cracked up a little. It was a weird mental image.

"That's all well and good," he said. "But half the time I find myself having to do a double-take to make sure you're _not_ sixteen and I'm _not_ breaking Merlin knows what laws with you." I couldn't help but giggle. It was just such a weird thing to say. I moved forward and kissed him, one hand on the side of his face.

"Wonderfully possibly illegal," I said, starting to giggle again.

Morning came, and the blinds on the windows were so effective that neither the sun nor Severus' internal alarm clock woke us up. In fact, the only thing dragging me out of a tango with George the talking kitty was a familiar noise. It was an 'awww' noise, and if I recalled correctly, it was usually uttered when Henry the real-life cat did something cute, by my mother. What on earth was my mother 'awww'-ing for? Unless Henry was doing something cute near me. With some regret, I fought to wake up properly and found myself with my face squished against Severus' collarbone, an arm around him. Oh, so help me, if my mother was 'awww'-ing over me, I would cut her. I would cut her _so bad_. I glanced over at the doorway and there she was, one hand on the doorknob, staring at me with a look on her face like all her Christmases had come at once. Which, unless there was a rift in the space-time continuum, had not happened.

"Woman, if that awww was directed at me, I will _cut you_," I muttered, as I detached Severus' arm from my shoulder blades and sat up. She fought to rid her face of the joyous expression and narrowed her eyes at me.

"You most certainly will not, Raphaela Vialle," she said. "Now, get changed and come to the kitchen for breakfast."

"Maybe I don't want to," I said petulantly. "Maybe I'm going to stay in bed _all day_. What do you think of _that_?"

"Frankly, I'm delighted," she said. "But you should wait until I've done your ovulation chart. You don't want to run out the batteries when your fruit isn't at its peak ripeness."

"No!" I cried. "Mixed metaphors! And that's _so_ not what I meant!"

"Of course it wasn't, Rapha," she said. "Come out anyway. I _suppose_ you can germinate later."

"Who's germinating?" came a muffled murmur from the land of half-asleep, where Severus was currently residing. I could barely believe he'd slept through my mother's shrill yammering, or my indignant cries.

"I'll germinate you," I said shortly, a phrase that was somewhat perplexing, now I thought about it.

"I'm sure you will…"


	28. The Neverending Monologue

Boo-yah! The neverending monologue! And don't you just hate people who wear ugly shoes? I know I do.

**Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Neverending Monologue**

The pond-lake thing out back wasn't the most spectacular thing in the world, but it was beautiful at Christmastime. It was always, without fail, frozen over completely, and sometimes I just lay on my stomach on the ice and marvelled at it. It always blew my mind a little bit, the thought that if it were any other season, I'd be lying on water. Yeah, water turning into ice, it mystified me. I never said I was a neurosurgeon. When I was growing up, my parents used to take me out back on Christmas morning at dawn, and we'd watch the snow and ice turn from blue to white as the sun came up. Even after I'd thrown a bratty little hissy fit and proclaimed myself to be too old for that stuff, I still used to sneak out before the sun came up and just sit by the frozen lake alone. I'd watch as the blue snow turned amber in the pink sunrise, and think, _this is the New Year_. It was like Christmas itself (and not the dawn that happened every day anyway) was changing the world's batteries and bringing new warmth and light into the world. New Years itself was arbitrary, a human creation. I'd always liked to think that Christmas was the real revolution, that we'd made a mistake with the calendars. Sitting by the lake had become something of a tradition for me, albeit one that had gone on hiatus since I'd left school and spent my Christmases at my own place.

Which was why I was so excited on Christmas Eve. Well, more than usual. Luckily, any giggling fits or uncontrollable smiling could have been put down to the magic of Christmas Eve, and I was certain that nobody had become suspicious of my highly wound-up state. My father, in his own little tradition, was wearing a striped red and green knit jumper, patterned with tiny reindeer. He and my mother were drinking eggnog by the fire, as they always did, and from where I lay on the floor of my father's study upstairs, I could hear my mother giggling. She'd be a lifetime lightweight. The grandfather clock in between bookshelves chimed ten, and I closed my eyes. Sometime in the night I woke up cold and groggy and staggered downstairs to the guest bedroom, but when I woke up at six on Christmas morning I was alone. Come to think of it, I hadn't checked for Severus when I'd slumped down in the middle of the night and nodded right off. I decided to shelve my moderate concern for now, though, and quietly, I put a fur-lined coat on over my pyjamas, pulled on a pair of tall ugg boots (shutup it doesn't count in winter), and crept out of the house. It had never been hard to sneak out of the house, I knew which floorboards creaked and I always made sure the hinges of the front door were well-oiled.

I pondered my enviable espionage talents as I rounded the corner and saw the lake come into view. Not only did I see the lake, but _someone_ was standing by the lake. Someone who looked like a black pillar against the blue snow and the lightening sky. When I saw him, I instinctively veered sideways and pressed myself to the side of the house. However, since there wasn't a chimney to hide me, Severus turned around and _I was spotted_. Well, there went my well-planned lake-sit for this year, _ruined_ by my so-called husband. I had half a mind to kick him really hard once I got over there, but I didn't, because it was Christmas, and Christmas is a day to not engage in domestic abuse.

"Merry Christmas," he said dryly. I fought hard not to yell at him for ruining my plans (since Christmas is a time for not yelling at your husband) and instead tried my best to smile pleasantly.

"That it is," I said in a weird, stilted manner. "What're you doing out here?"

"Waiting for you."

Impossible! Someone had cracked about my secret plans. But who? Who knew? Only me, and I'd never tell. Unless… I'd been hypnotised! I would have flat-out accused him of it, but it was Christmas, and Christmas is a time for not accusing your husband of hypnotising you. Instead, I just narrowed my eyes at him. True, Christmas is a time to not glare at your husband, but I figured that eye-narrowing didn't count as glaring. The blue was already fading from the snow, I had to act fast, and damn the consequences. I walked over to stand next to Severus and sat down heavily, like he wasn't even there. Christmas is not a time for ignoring your husband, but it wasn't _really_ ignoring. Just… selective attention. Anyway, he turned around and sat down beside me without a word.

Soon enough, the sun was casting an orange glow onto everything (except Severus, of course. He got blue glow because he was so pale) and shining _right in my damn eyes_, which was really annoying. I still didn't say a word to Severus, though. It was a nice moment, I wasn't about to ruin it. Christmas is not a time for moment-ruining. Eventually, he stood up and walked back to the house, leaving something next to me in the snow. It was a small box and a rose, which had a piece of parchment wrapped around it. I picked up the rose first and pulled the parchment off, sending the rose spiralling down into my lap.

_Raphaela, _

_I wouldn't want to break such a recently-created tradition._

_Eloquence still escapes me while you are in my life, so I am afraid you will have to settle for this._

_I love you. Always._

_Love._

Oh. Oh wow, wasn't that sweet. It was made better, of course, by the near-spasms he must have had just trying to get himself to write something that wasn't snarky, but the sentiment was still incredibly lovely. I folded the parchment and put it in a coat pocket. I'd have to find a safer place to put it later, but there was still that mysterious box to inspect. And inspect I did, with my mystical powers of 'opening things'. In it was a silver necklace, the pendant of which was two swirly serpents, crossing each other to form a kind of an X shape, with some kind of navy blue gem for their eyes. Yes, I, Raphaela Vialle, was married to the most wonderful, thoughtful, sweet man in the entirely of Britain. Nay! The world! And I had never felt sorrier for the rest of the population.

-----

Those just joining the series (or those with poor memories for things that happened A Long Time Ago) might not remember this, but a year ago, after spending a moderately snark-free Christmas together, Severus sent Raphaela a rose confessing his UNDYING LOVE, or something fruity like that. Anyway, it was anonymous, so she thought it was from her then-boyfriend. Severus, he does not think ahead.


	29. What Christmas is and is Not a Time For

I dunno, has it been longer than usual between updates? It feels like it's been longer than usual. How good is dessert wine? Seriously.

**Chapter Twenty-Nine: What Christmas is and is Not a Time For**

Back inside the house, someone had gotten a fire going, and it was so warm that it actually made me realise that it was probably below zero outside, and I was lucky that my very pretty new necklace hadn't frozen onto the top of my sternum. I wandered into the lounge room, where my parents were in their pyjamas by the fire. Severus was nowhere to be seen. They turned around to face me as I came into the room, and smiled broadly.

"Oh, I admit it, dear," my mother said in a very tortured sort of way. "I told Severus that you liked to go out to the lake on Christmas."

But how did they _know_? This was insane. _HOW DID THEY KNOW?_ All this time I'd thought I had this big secret, that I was _so_ good at espionage and sneaking around, but they _knew_? "And how did _you_ know?" I asked accusatorily.

"We're not idiots," my father said gruffly. "It was kind of obvious."

"You're really very clumsy, dear," my mother said. "And at a time when we were both awake anyway, it wasn't exactly a chore to look out of a window."

Oh, fine. Crush all my hopes and dreams. I'd never get to be a spy. Unless… a very complicated plan involving Severus, a pensieve, and tricky magic that I probably wouldn't be able to accomplish at all (the beginning of most of my plans, actually) started to form in my head, but it was dashed at a single memory.

"But when I was sixteen you caught me coming back in and you grounded me for sneaking out with Lucindy! I wasn't doing that!" I said. "I'm glad _now_ my name has been cleared of all misdeeds, but that false imprisonment was the height of injustice!"

My mother looked at my father and rolled her eyes. "Dear, it was blindingly obvious that every other night you'd sneak out with Lucindy," she said dryly. "To be honest, we hadn't the energy to catch you in _that_ act. It was easier just to wait for the twenty-fifth."

I was gobsmacked. Not only did my parents know, they were sneaky. And sly! Maybe _they _should have been the spies. I did a very over-exaggerated turn of my head, and I walked out of the room, completely forgetting about presents. I grumped and stomped all the way down the hall to the guest bedroom, where Severus had been hiding out. "Did you know that when I was sixteen, my parents _ruined_ my Christmas for their own convenience?" It was then that I noticed he was practically writhing in anticipation. "Yes, your present was lovely and I love you very much too. But now we have to concentrate on wreaking unholy vengeance against the betrayers."

Cured of his queer writhe-thing, Severus approached me and put his arms around me in a pacifying sort of a way. "Raphaela, it was twelve years ago."

"Christmas is _eternal!_"

He sighed and hung his head somewhat in exasperation. "What is Christmas a time for, Raphaela?"

I pouted. "Love and joy," I said sulkily.

"And what is Christmas not a time for?"

"Wreaking unholy vengeance against one's family members."

"Very good. Now are you ready to go back and enjoy your Christmas?"

"Always."

I pulled away and took off my coat, hanging it on the hook on the back of the door. Severus narrowed his eyes at me. "Are you making fun of me?"

I smirked at him and raised my hand, thumb and forefinger barely an inch apart. "Just a very little bit. As much as you were making fun of _me_ just now, using my love of Christmas against me."

"Your love of Christmas is…" he paused. "Entirely adorable." I giggled. "Do you recall last year's Christmas?"

"Of course," I said, smiling even wider. That Christmas had been a particularly good one. "We had tasty beverages and you were nice to me, for the first time _ever_."

"And you chose to hear sandwich fillings instead of insultery?"

"Insultery isn't a word." I was taking a shot here. I didn't actually know whether or not insultery was a real word. But I was willing to stake a little bit of Severus' faith in my intelligence on it. I wondered momentarily whether or not he had any faith in my intelligence. Oh well.

"Words are what I say they are."

"Yes, I do remember that. I was _so_ not going to let you ruin my Christmas with your meanness. And I didn't! And now I'm married to you. Only good things come out of Christmas."

"This is my point," he said slowly, as though he were explaining to a small child why two and two equalled four. Oh. Right.

"You're right," I said, throwing my arms around his neck dramatically. "As always, my lovely, smart husband. My parents are forgiven until it stops being Christmas, which is in about sixteen hours, so you'd better start thinking of vengeance techniques."

"Quite," he sighed, patting me on the back awkwardly. When I'd got tired of hugging him (which would have been NEVER, had my arm muscles not started to protest) we went back into the lounge room, where my parents were still in their pyjamas but had cracked into the eggnog.

"Nog!" my mother cried, holding up her beverage in a salute to eggnog. I had never felt closer to her. "Presents!"

"Don't you still have to get Christmas lunch sorted?" I asked warily as I caught the wrapped missiles coming at me from my father's throws. My mother and the kitchen was a match made in heaven, but so was my mother and eggnog. Unfortunately, eggnog and kitchens did not go so well together.

"Sally's hosting it this year, dear poppet," she said with a smile. "Which means I can get squiffy and seduce someone."

"You most certainly will not," my father said, but he was grinning. Before the conversation could turn from funny to awkward, I decided to cut in between them for presents time. Unfortunately, it was not to be, for a loud thump echoed from the kitchen. I dashed off there, suddenly full of energy, and saw an owl looking dazed in the poppies outside. I flung the window open and yanked the bird inside, where it dropped its letter and zoomed off. I barely had time to recognise it as belonging to my cousin before it was a mere speck in the sky. It was addressed to me, which was odd. I never got mail. And why was my cousin owling me when we were going to be at the same Christmas lunch thing in a few hours? I sat cross-legged on the bench and opened it as Severus wandered into the room. If one can wander imposingly, that's what he did, for he was quite imposing in everything he did. Anyway, I tore my attention away from thinking about Severus and his imposingness to this letter. It was dated early the day before, which was _really_ perplexing. Why did the owl take so long? I picked up the envelope again and examined it. In small print that I had understandably missed before, there was a small note in McGonagall's handwriting.

_The owl was very confused when it couldn't deliver its letter to you at Hogwarts. It seemed to perk up when I informed it of your current whereabouts though. Merry Christmas._

Hmm, I guess my parents didn't tell anyone I was coming back for Christmas, then. I discarded the envelope once more and unfolded the letter itself.

_Raphie,_

_Sorry to bother you, I'm sure you're very busy and important, but Ana's sick in the Hospital Wing. She says it's not serious enough to go to St. Mungo's, but I'd really feel a lot better if you could keep an eye on her for me._

_Thanks, Misty_

Well, that was weird. Why hadn't she known I wasn't at Hogwarts?

"May I ask what that is regarding?" Severus said, resting an elbow on the countertop beside him.

"Remember Ana?"

"No, I have completely forgotten about her. You see, I am only aware of people's existence when they are standing directly in front of me. You have parents? I had no idea."

I glared for a moment before continuing. "She's in the hospital wing, sick. My cousin just wrote to me asking me to make sure she's okay."

"She doesn't know you're here?"

"Oh, no, she knows," I said dryly. "She just thinks I can do it telepathically. Of course she doesn't know." We had a short glare-off but I relented first, closing my eyes momentarily and taking a deep breath. "Christmas is not a time for glaring."

"Or for snark."

"Hey, you started it!"

"Or for baseless accusations."

I couldn't help but smile. "Well, there's only one thing to do."

"Learn telepathy?"

"Shutup. Christmas is a time for love, joy, and making sure that our family members are free from pestilence."

"Pestilence?"

"Yes. We must… _go back to Hogwarts_."

"How very dramatic."


	30. Special Event

Whoa. Um, yeah. So it's been like, what, two months? Yikes. My bad. And I can't even blame it on exams taking up all my time (EVEN THOUGH THEY TOTALLY DID) because all this stuff's already written and it would pretty much take under five minutes to add another chapter. So... yeah. If I have any readers left at all, this is me feeling a lot like the emoticon that FFN won't show, but it's the greater than symbol, a period, then the less than symbol. That's what face I'm making.

So I'll be adding this little not-really-a-chapter oneshot and the next chapter at once because y'all might spork me in the ears if the first thing I upload in two months isn't continuing the story. Normal uploading time frames should resume as normal.

**Chapter Thirty: Special Event**

This is not chapter thirty. This isn't really chapter anything. I just went to see HP6 last night (remember I write the whole story before uploading anything, so I'll probably post this about six months from now) and the Snape scenes were just so squee-able that I had to do something to commemorate. It's a little one-shot that is _extremely_ AU to the main story. It's so non-canon (to this fic, anyway) that if you tried to light the fuse it would make annoyed noises at you and poop in your ice cream. Yeah, I made a pun.

So this is set at the start of HP6 at Spinner's End, when by all rights Raphaela should have been working at a bookstore and living alone in an apartment, and Severus would be doing ordinary canon things like making unbreakable vows and being angry at Dumbledore. (Raphaela left school in 1990 and returned in 2000, if anyone's keeping score. And if I'm not mistaken HP6 was set in '96.) So I really can't stress this enough, this is just a silly little hypothetical based on a throwaway comment that Raphaela made way back in chapter thirteen. Anyway, enjoy it.

* * *

I felt myself being drawn out of my slumber and into reality, but I kept my eyes shut. I dearly wanted to go back to sleep, but I'd gotten myself into a sleeping position where my head was back and my jaw was drooping, so my open mouth had gotten all dried out. It was annoying me enough that it roused me the rest of the way awake. "Sev'rus," I muttered into the darkness, but there was no response. Not even a dismissive twitch next to me. I flopped my arm down beside me, hoping to 'accidentally' connect with him and wake him up, but there was nothing there. I sat up suddenly. The fear that always overcame me when he went off on one of his missions came flooding back. The fear that this time would be the last time that he'd say a surreptitious 'good-bye' as he left the house. I mean, being with him, it was impossible to be scared. He was just so tangible and unbreakable when he was around, but when he was gone from the house and the days turned into weeks, I started to wonder. Also, it really wasn't like him to leave without telling me. He was probably just downstairs, reading or plotting or baking a soufflé. Well, not really. But really about the first two.

My dry mouth sent waves of annoyance into my mind, reminding me of its presence, and I looked at the glass on my bedside table. It was empty. Damn it! I'd have to go all the way downstairs. I threw off the blankets and stood up, cursing under my breath at the cold floor. I pulled on a pair of socks that just looked _so_ hot with the shorts slash tank top combination I already had on, and then I padded downstairs. By the time I got to the bottom step, though, I heard muffled voices coming from behind an ajar door to my right. I'd always been a secret of his. I'd always had to hide upstairs whenever 'company' came around. The danger for me was just too terrible, he'd say. I mean, I never really _wanted_ to meet any of his Death Eater buddies, or expose myself to the danger that he sent himself into writhes over whenever he thought of it, but this time the temptation was too great. I pushed the door slightly open and peered in through the tiny crack.

Though the opening was relatively small, I could still make out Severus with two women in that room. For a moment, I had an image of Severus having a secret harem and just pretending to be a spy. I practically gave myself a heart attack trying to keep silent with that thought in my head, but had to content myself with _silent_ shrieks of laughter. It wouldn't do to get caught and killed by Death Eaters when I was only twenty-three. Anyway, one of the women he was with was an incredibly pale blonde woman who looked like she was both constipated and internally tortured (and one probably followed on from the other, har har) while the other had wild black hair and looked mad as a hatter. Probably lived with about sixty cats. Severus was grasping the hand of the blonde woman while the dark-haired one had her wand aimed at the point where the two connected. Wrenching myself out of the daze I was in, I started to listen properly.

"…I will." Severus said. In a bit of spellwork I'd never seen before, something like a tiny rope of fire coiled around their hands. What was he doing, marrying this anaemic bint?

"And will you, to the best of your ability, protect him from harm?" the blonde said. She looked a bit calmer now, which is incidentally the opposite of how _I_ would look if someone was tying me to someone else with a bloody _fire-rope_.

"I will." What on earth was he agreeing to do? Who was this that needed protecting? The whole bloody thing was ridiculous and I had half a mind to go in there and put a stop to it. Then again, the other half of my mind was the rational half, and that half said _you do not tell Death Eaters what to do_.

"And, should it prove necessary… if it seems Draco will fail… will you carry out the deed that the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to perform?" At this, Severus' face made a tiny change, almost undetectable but not unlike the time I told him I'd been wearing the same pair of trousers for twenty-four days. It seemed that the two women were both too distracted to really notice, though, as the blonde still seemed wrapped up in her own torture and the dark-haired one just looked shocked at what was going on.

"I will."

The weird fiery rope magic thing seemed to wrap itself up, and the two women made as if to leave. I dashed away from the crack in the door before they could turn and see me, passed the front door (which was incidentally just perpendicular to the door I'd just had my face pressed against) and pressed myself against the wall next to a bookshelf in the next room. I heard the women saying their goodbyes to Severus and the sound of the door opening and shutting, before Severus stormed into the kitchen looking livid. He didn't say a word or even look at me, he just yanked a cord by the window so that the drapes snapped shut and took a deep breath. I was beginning to wonder if he even knew I was there when he turned and glared at me like he wanted to shove a fire-rope down my throat.

"What are they making you do?" I asked, trying to defuse his rage. He didn't answer at once, he simply kept glaring.

"I should have cast the full-body bind, or… or stupefied you, or _something_," he seethed through his clenched teeth. "What-do-I-have-to-_do_ to keep you away from those who would harm you? Tell me that!"

"I didn't mean to," I said, feeling suddenly sheepish. "I didn't know people were here."

"You need to stay away," he said, still seething. "You _need_ to. I need you to."

"I said I didn't mean to," I muttered. "What are you doing anyway?"

"Oh, nothing," he said, putting on mock-breeziness while still speaking through a clenched jaw. He turned away and moved over to the window, staring out even though the curtains were closed. "Only _murder_ the only man who's ever… to keep a _fairly_ innocent boy from becoming… this is so _unfair!_" There was a bay window seat in front of that particular window, and he sat down heavily on it and put his head in his hands. He looked like he was about to start tearing chunks of his hair out, so I sat down next to him. "I have to _kill_ Albus Dumbledore. He… you don't even know half of what that man has done for me…"

"Kill Dumbledore?" I was dumbfounded. He obviously wasn't going to _do_ it. "You… you can't."

"I made the vow, Raphaela," he said, and this time he sounded more lost and defeated than I'd ever heard before. "If Draco doesn't, and I don't, I'll die."

I took a deep breath. This… this wasn't like any of the other missions he'd been on. There was a fairly good chance he wouldn't be coming out the other end of this one. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do to help him. I put my arms around his neck and didn't let go. He didn't turn to hug me back, he just continued to sit motionless and horror-stricken. I shifted my lower body so that I was still sitting next to him, but had one leg on each side of his waist and was leg-hugging that way too.

"What are you -"

"Shutup," I said sharply. Minutes passed, but I didn't let go and he didn't move.

"I really don't understand what -"

"I said shutup." Bloody hell. Something terrible was going to happen to him. I just knew it. Not even in a suddenly-good-at-Divination kind of way, either. It was just common sense. Killing the most powerful force of good in the world, paving the way for a new order of evil to rule? That just wasn't going to end well. None of it would matter though, whether he succeeded or failed he'd end up dead. Even if he did manage to off the old man, there'd be no way he wouldn't be hunted down and slain. I was going to lose him, one way or another. I felt like I was counting down the seconds until all I had were memories and tears, and no more Severus to hug.

And it was with a horrible sense of danger that just wouldn't go away, with a sense of desperation and urgency, and with the sense that I needed to commit everything about him to my memory before it was too late, that I hugged him as hard as I could and didn't let go until the first dawn light crept through the crack in the curtains. Then, I disentangled myself from him, took his cold hand in my warm, shaking one, and without a word, we went upstairs to bed.


	31. A Very Merry Christmas

So here's the extra chapter, the STORY CONTINUING. Oh, maybe I should add a little recap since HOLY COW IT'S BEEN SO LONG. Anyway, it's just gone Christmas and they gotta go back to the ol' Hog to check up on Ana. And now, without further ado (also known as depressing one-shots that make me tear up a little during the writing process), back to the proverbial action.

**Chapter Thirty-one: A **_**Very**_** Merry Christmas**

So, we'd lied a little. We'd kind of embellished Ana's sickness, sort of made it out to be a life-or-death sort of thing. It was a victimless crime, though, by the time my parents got to Aunt Sally's place and my cousin Misty had informed them of the relative innocuousness of Ana's sickness, we'd be long gone. I was blameless, anyway. My mother had driven me away with all her talk of ovulation and insemination and other words ending in 'ation' that were probably equally gross. I swear, if I had to hear another word about my reproductive organs, I'd throw up all over whoever said it to me and make them eat it. All of it. Before I could do that, though, I'd have to learn both how to throw up on command and how to make someone eat sick with minimal effort on my part. Eh, too difficult. I'd just seethe quietly.

At any rate, we had to take our sweet presents on the road, so to speak, since we just _had_ to go _right that very second_ and there was not a moment to spare. Poor, young, sweet Ana's life hung in the balance. I admit, I was a little upset to have missed out on Christmas lunch. Traditionally, it was a time when I would get slightly hammered and eat so much I'd have to lie on the living room floor going 'urrrgh' and take my mind off it with animated Christmas specials about talking dogs. Oh, the delicate nuances of Christmas.

And oh, the wonders of apparition! Gone were the days when I had to _wait_ if I wanted to get somewhere. Of course, there was that whole 'no apparition at Hogwarts' thing, which _sucked_, since we had to materialise outside of the grounds and then walk the whole stupid way up. And walk we did, even though I whined and complained with every step and Severus threatened to sew my mouth shut with a rusty needle. In return, I threatened to take my mother's advice and become parasite-riddled. That shut him up. Not that I'd follow through with it, of course. If his seed was anything like him, I'd end up throwing it out a window. That was, if it didn't blast its way out of my stomach at about the second week, demanding I put some clothes on it because inter-uterine nudity was _so_ uncouth.

We ended up running smack-bang into McGonagall as we entered the castle, since she was just on her way to the Great Hall for Christmas breakfast. She looked more surprised to see us than anything else.

"I didn't expect you two back until the end of the break," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"We were summoned on urgent business to take care of a terminally ill child whose mother is simply distraught with thoughts of what is happening to her little bundle of joy," I said quickly. To paraphrase a great man, someone should call the hyperbole police, who'd lock me up in exaggeration-traz. McGonagall's eyebrows rose.

"What Raphaela means," said Severus, not without some weary contempt, "is that we were asked to check up on Ana every so often."

"And every opportunity we get to escape from my parents, we must take," I finished with a grin.

"Ana?" McGonagall echoed. "Hardly terminal. Madam Pomfrey's given her something to shorten the duration, but it's just a matter of waiting it out, really."

"Excellent!" I said loudly. "That means we don't have to do anything. We can just sit around and eat pilfered café sugar packets and listen to Bauhaus and dye our hair with permanent markers and talk about how _nobody understands us_ and talk about starting a band but never do it. Because it's Christmas."

"Mad," Severus muttered. "Absolutely mad."

"Right," McGonagall finally replied, after looking at us like we were from another planet. "Well, I'd best be going. Merry Christmas." I watched her walk away from us and disappear into the Great Hall before I followed Severus down to the dungeons, where he made us delicious beverages, laced with booze at my request. It was a very merry Christmas indeed, partly because of how well it echoed the previous year's activities. I mean, it's not like I particularly enjoyed those times, seeing as I wasn't married to Severus then, but it was still weird to think that a whole year had passed since that Christmas day. It seemed like so long ago. It might have set the feminist movement back a century, but it just seemed like nothing really mattered in my life before Severus came into it. I mean, there was school, then I was aimlessly drifting, then I came to Hogwarts and I had a _purpose_. Or a porpoise. Preferably both. The point was, even before I'd discovered my undying love for men who happened to be pale, snarky Potions Masters with haircuts that can at best be described as 'fruity', I'd had a purpose in _hating_ Severus Snape. Well, not so much hate as OH MERLIN WHY DOESN'T HE LIKE ME, WHY DOES HE THINK I'M SO INCOMPETENT, WHY ISN'T HE EVER NICE TO ME, but the sentiment was still there.

And after quite a few too many of the boozy beverages (and I suspect Severus' judgement was impaired after the first few and put quite a bit more liquor in the following ones) I felt even better about my awesome life. I was flopped sideways in an armchair, legs over the right arm of it. I was resting my drink on my belly with my right hand while my left hand was placed between my head and the left arm of the chair, and I was watching Severus intently. He himself looked ever-so-slightly docile on the couch, his right arm resting on the armrest (hence the name, I suppose) while he held his beverage with the other arm and blinked a lot while staring at the fire. I stood up on wobbly legs, rested my drink on the dark wooden coffee table in the middle of the chair arrangement, and wandered over to lean forwards onto the back of the couch, right behind Severus. I put my hands on his head and he didn't move away from my tampering, but made a noise of protest instead. That noise was followed by actual words.

"What… what did I say that you do never do never do?" he said, still blinking at the fire. I giggled madly.

"Leave mah underpants around the, uh… the, uh… what's the word I'm looking for? Uh… place."

"Not that is what I am talking about. Not talking about."

"Um… make you say something that would imply affection without a five-minute preparation period?" I was very proud of my remembering abilities, but they seemed to be slightly less well-received by Severus.

"Raphaela you are deliberately being obtuse and you would think that when I ask you about something I have said you would consider what the context of it is and you would think about that but instead you just tell me all of the things I have ever said to you in my life, your life, both our… our lifes, and that is just not productive, it is not productive for things." He said all of that in an odd, toneless voice, like he just did not have the energy to yell at me properly.

"You said to me… you said that I was to not ever touch your hair unless I really felt the need to just do just that. And right now is what I'm like… just feeling like it's the right thing to do. The planets have foreseen it."

"I added the last part for situations that are not these ones, Raphaela," he said. "Planets do not have any idea what they are talking about, you are just _looking_ for an excuse to touch things that I tell you not to touch."

"But it's so…" I trailed off, pulling parts of it very gently. "It's all…" I caught him off-guard, and flipped part of it to the other side so that he was no longer a centre-part but a _side-part_. My devilish plan, it was coming together nicely. "Now we eat sugar packets and listen to Bauhaus and dye our hair with permanent markers and do whatever else I said that we would do." I clambered over the back of the couch, trying to be somewhat acrobatic, but I ended up toppling over. I righted myself very quickly (considering) and sat sideways next to Severus, staring at his face in profile. His nose twitched and he let his head loll to the side so that it faced me.

"We don't have any sugar packets, and I have absolutely no idea what Bauhaus or permanent markers are," he said, giving me a mini-glare. "How do _you_ know what they are, if your parents are all magical and witches and wizards and doing spells and things?"

"I lived around mugs," I said with a smug grin.

"Muggles."

"S'what I said."

"You said mugs is what you said."

"WHY would I say mugs."

"I do not know why you do the things that you do."

"I'll do you if you're not careful." I swayed slightly and then realised. "Gah. I did not mean that like that."

"I'm entirely sure that that is exactly what you meant," he muttered, turning back to blink at the fire. "I have been married to you for some amount of time that I do not particularly feel like counting. I know what you're like."

"You know nothing," I said, glaring. He turned to face me again.

"Bloody hell, I know that look, too."

"Is it a look to make you regret whatever it is you said to me?"

"Maybe, if you did not have that weird droopy-eyed thing and creepy smile."

"Oh." I was disappointed. My glares were being _misunderstood? _As come-hithers? What was the world coming to? "Well, d'you want to then?"

He let out an exasperated sigh and looked straight at me. "Raphaela," he said, very seriously. "_Why_ do you still think you need to ask that?"

I grinned broadly. "Excellent."


	32. Agreeable

**Chapter Thirty-Two: Agreeable**

I awoke in a daze. It was about ten at night and I was inexplicably fully rested. Well, booze always made me sleepy. Well, it was probably a combination of booze and boning that made me so sleepy. But still, it was like, just getting into night-time and I'd just woken up. This wasn't the way it was meant to be, I just knew it. It gave me an odd feeling in my head that probably had nothing to do with the minimal amount of alcohol I'd consumed about twelve hours beforehand. Well, it was minimal for me. I'd had maybe four, six drinks, tops. I'd been a _bit_ pissed. Not extremely so. Which was why I felt entirely comfortable using a summoning charm to bring the decanter of tequila over to the bed.

Whispering quietly so I wouldn't wake the still-snoozing Severus facing away from me in the bed, I started to sing. "Oh, oh, oh, oh… oh tequila! Oh, oh, oh, oh… oh tequila!" That, in turn, put the pina colada song in my head, and damned if I wasn't going to start whisper-singing that too. Just when I'd got to the bit about being caught in the rain, though, the decanter started floating back over towards the cabinet, and I let out a yelp. "Poltergeist!" I cried, before turning to see Severus, who was sitting up, waving his wand in a half-asleep sort of way and glaring ever so slightly.

"I will not enable your growing alcoholism, Raphaela," he muttered as he sank back onto the pillows. "We do not drink in bed."

"That's no fun," I pouted. "I was only going to have like, one pina colada." He raised an eyebrow. "With tequila. And without the coconut. Or pineapple juice. Or Malibu."

"Or glass," he said, glancing at the bedside table. "We do not drink straight from the bottle."

I stuck my tongue out. "Absolutely no fun."

"Careful, Raphaela," he said dangerously. "If you can't use that tongue responsibly it will be taken away from you."

I snorted, and Severus looked moderately horror-stricken as he realised the ammunition he'd given me. I decided to take the high road though, and simply smiled at him in a very tight-lipped sort of way before swinging my legs out of bed to find some pants to wear. Pants, pants, pants. If I were pants, where would I be? I repeated this question to Severus, who simply responded that they'd probably been adopted by someone who wouldn't leave them hanging off chairs for casual passers-by to see. I finally found some (in the underwear drawer, where a smart person probably would have looked first) and glared at Severus.

"I _stopped_ leaving my pants everywhere, as you'll recall," I said smugly. "Nobody but you and I have seen my pants in at least four months. And you'll agree that they are very nice pants?"

He sighed. "Of course. But you are forgetting something, aren't you?" I shrugged insolently. "October third, you left your pants hanging off the drawer of my desk in the classroom, you'll recall."

"Not my fault that's where they ended up."

"Of course it wasn't."

"Besides, you managed to get them into the drawer before anyone really _saw_."

"Yes," he muttered sarcastically. "_That's_ the point."

I scooted back over to the bed and knelt on it, poking Severus in the arm. "Are you annoyed with me?"

"Quite," was all he said, turning away slightly and pushing my hand away with no more force than was necessary. I screwed up my nose at him.

"Well, what else is new. I'm going to go visit Ana in the hospital wing."

"It's half past ten at night."

"Then I'm going to go to sleep."

"You just woke up."

"Then I'm going to… I'm going to poke you again."

"I wish you wouldn't."

"Then I'm going to just sit here and do nothing for the rest of my entire life," I said, plonking myself down next to Severus on the bed.

"What did you just do?" Severus asked, eyes wide. What was he talking about?

"I turned around and sat down," I said. "Now I'm thinking about muffins."

"No, I mean before that," he said, still sounding very shocked. "Did you actually refrain from doing something that you _know_ annoys me because I asked you to?"

"Might've done," I said evasively. So _that_ was what had gotten him all in a tizz. My acting like a reasonable human being was enough to make him doubt _everything he had ever believed in his life_. Well, that might have been an exaggeration, but it was half past ten, and the hyperbole police were all asleep. I was free to exaggerate all I liked. Severus, meanwhile, narrowed his eyes in a way that was more thoughtful than glare-filled.

"Stop trying to convince people I've been slipping you love potions for the past year." But… but that was my favourite pastime! "The part where you pretend to come out of it and say 'I remember… I was going to marry Johnny' is particularly irksome." But his _face_ when I did it was just too precious. It was what he did when I was doing something publicly embarrassing, which was motionless staring at a point in the distance and glaring heavily.

"Okay, sure," I said with a shrug. Severus' eyes got even narrowed-er.

"Stop referring to me as Count Von Count in front of the students."

"Alright then."

"Stop referring to me as Count Von Count in bed."

"… Fine."

"Stop putting up that stupid poster of that ridiculous Muggle band." Well, maybe _he_ should've stopped taking it down.

"Okay."

"Stop doing my hair as I sleep."

"Sure thing."

He stared at me in a piercing sort of way for a minute. "I was under the impression that you lived to irritate me. Why on earth are you agreeing to all these things?"

"Oh, I don't know," I said breezily, before smiling broadly and diving at him, hugging him tightly around the ribs and squishing my face somewhat. "Might be because I love you, and I like doing things that make you happy."

He snorted, but it wasn't really a laugh of amusement. More general goodwill, I think. At least, I hoped. "I find that to be… entirely agreeable."

"Because you love me too," I said, hugging him tighter. He choked somewhat in my constriction and I reluctantly loosened my grip. Allowing him to breathe was my gift.

"Of course," he muttered. "It's entirely possible that I find you to be exceedingly pleasant company, Raphaela."

The corners of my mouth twitched in a smile. "You smell like a pencil."


	33. Regarding Bears

**Chapter Thirty-Three: Regarding Bears**

Once the sun had risen and breakfast had been consumed (I had cereal. It was awesome.) I decided that I'd better fulfil my cousinly duties. I mentioned visiting Ana to Severus when I'd eaten enough cereal to sustain a bison who was just about to go into hibernation, and he expressed the desire to accompany me. That was unexpected. I was under the impression that he didn't even like the kid. Hell, _I_ didn't even like her that much, and she was related to me. By blood, no less. That meant that according to blood rules, I should have liked her more than I liked Severus, who wasn't even related to me. The technicalities and implications of blood rules started to disturb me at that point, and I started to wonder if blood rules even existed or whether I'd just made them up in my cereal-addled state. Probably the latter, I decided as I pushed open the door of the hospital wing.

"Sup bitches?" I called out, to a scandalised glare from Madam Pomfrey.

"Professor Vialle, please, there are sick students," she said as she made a bed. I simply smiled and cast my eyes about for Ana. She wasn't hard to find, possibly because Severus had already gone over to her and was staring down at her, an odd look on his face. Ana looked like she was about to pee herself.

"Severus, you're scaring the sick child," I said, and he snapped out of it and looked at me.

"Of… of course," he muttered, before sitting into one of those uncomfortable hospital wing chairs. "Not terminal, I see."

"No," was all Ana said.

"Ana, seriously, don't be scared of him," I said, sitting on the other side of her bed. "He's just as scared of you as you are of him."

"Doubtful," Severus interjected, before falling silent once more.

Ana nodded. "Very doubtful." I glanced over at Severus and saw the corners of his mouth twitch. Why was he in such a weird mood today? Maybe it was all the cereal I'd eaten. It was transferring to him by the powerful bond of wedded-ness and he was having a bad cereal trip.

"Maybe you should go to the chill-out room," I suggested to Severus, who in turn looked bewildered.

"What?"

"You know, ambient music and stuff, it'll help get the cereal out."

"What are you talking about?" Severus and Ana said together. Sweet Merlin's beard, now there were two of him. When would the madness end? _When_?

"Ana," I said very seriously. "How are you going in Potions?"

"Okay, I guess," she said. "You're _there_, you know how I'm going."

"Right," I said. "Poorly. Ever get the urge to… cut your hair? To say… shoulder length, a bit above?"

"Not really."

"What about dyeing? Ever want to go _black_?"

"No."

"Have you ever got the urge to flounce about in fruity robes and try to convince me that they count as actual clothes?"

"Fruity?" Severus cut in, glaring at me. He looked incensed, and I giggled.

"I've never wanted to do that, Raphie," Ana replied earnestly. Well, there was that mystery sorted. There was only one Severus, and that was the way it should have been. If there'd been two of them, well, to be honest I'm sure they'd spend all their time insulting me and congratulating each other on being masters of the universe. Then again, the possibilities…

"Are you feeling okay?" Severus asked. He was staring at me in that weird, piercing way again, and I did not like it one bit.

"Stop that," I said as I stood up from the chair. Unfortunately, I failed to take into account the huge medical light fixture above Ana's bed and I cracked my head on it, sinking down to the floor. As fast as I fell though, I shot back up, and of course hit the fixture again. Smooth. The third time I stood up, though, it stuck, and I didn't hit anything. "Wow, that was trippy," I said, stretching out my arms to balance myself. "I had _so_ much cereal this morning. I had so much bran I'm going to poop like six times today."

"Charming," Severus said, looking a tad frightened. Madam Pomfrey bustled over and stared at the top of my head.

"That looked like quite a nasty pair of hits, Professor," she said. "May I take a look? Your hair's quite dark, I can't rightly tell if there's been an injury…"

"No need for Poppy, that," I said, trying to smile reassuringly at her. Wait, those words didn't sound right. "Cereal will protect me. Cereal always is light fixture. Hit me in the bran. Words are being a bit funny. I'm sure it'll come right." I felt something drip down my forehead and I tried to look at it, but for some reason my eyes stayed inside my head and I couldn't inspect what was happening on my face. "Severus," I said, turning to him. He sighed at me, looking exasperated beyond belief. "I need you to be my eyes. Is my hair crying? If it wants a new conditioner I will switch."

"Clumsy beyond belief, as usual," he said, crossing his arms. "Poppy, my… my Raphaela needs some medical attention, she appears to have sustained another head injury."

"No, no, no," I said, tottering on unsteady feet towards the exit. "I'll just go and get some cats, and they'll fix the sock problem. Where are the wicker baskets?" I had almost reached the door when I remembered something. "That's right," I said, then paused. What was I going to say?

"Raphaela, come back," came a weary voice from somewhere behind me.

"Cerevus?" I called out at the door. "Where are the baskets? I need them to live."

"You've probably cracked your skull open again," the voice continued.

"No, you're mistaken," I said to the door. It was being bloody pushy, and we'd only just met. "I thank you for your concern regarding this matter, but you see, I don't have a skeleton. I'm a beetle, and my skeleton is on the outside. Exoskeleton."

"Possible brain damage," the sound kept going.

"There needs to be a…" I trailed off. "You know what, Door, you're not a doctor. Leave me to my knitting. I shall crochet you a tea cosy if you'll only bring me hidden cameras to affix to the ties of the villains of the piece."

"Raphaela."

"_CAMERAS! DOOR, BRING THEM TO ME!_"

"Of course. But you need to allow Madam Pomfrey to reattach the parts of your head that have separated from each other."

"Can we do that in Chile though?"

"We aren't going to Chile."

"Excellent. Where is this head? I need to stick it to something."

"Turn around."

I obeyed the door's instructions and found myself staring at a room full of beds. "This room is so convenient, because I have been feeling a little sleepy," I muttered. "In fact, I might just have a little nap." I had the vague idea in my head of getting under a blanket, but then everything went black and something collided with my face and upper body. Was I being attacked by a bear? If so, it was a very nice sort of a bear, a bear that smelled like old books and maybe a pencil. What was a bear doing reading? Familiar, though. Something dragged on my toes and I fought hard to open my eyes. I managed to get them slightly opened and saw that the room was being pulled along all around me. Who was doing it? Was it guinea pigs, hundreds of them in exercise wheels that were propelling the room along? Suddenly, the room stopped and my head started to swim, so I let my eyes close once more. The bear, for I was certain that it really was a bear, was holding me upright now. Someone very far away said something about a hospital bed. I felt the bear's muzzle move against the side of my face and whisper something in a strange bear language in my ear, but being a trout, it was unintelligible to me. "I don't speak bear," I said in trout. Everything was still dark and I could hear the bear snuffle next to me. "Thank you for not waiting at the top of the rapids with your mouth open, bear. You know how I love to hop on up there."

The bear growled something in response, a growl that made my bones shiver. I supposed it was just the natural response for a trout though. Or was I a hummingbird? I tried to flap my arms at sixty times a second but all I managed to do was to twitch my fingers slightly. I wasn't a hummingbird, then. I was a mermaid after all. "I want to be a real girl," I said. "I will trade my lovely singing voice for a pair of legs, even if with every step it will feel like broken glass sticking into the soles of my feet."

"That didn't happen to you," the bear half-growled, half-spoke. How did the bear know my language? It was… _learning_. "And your singing voice could peel wallpaper."

"Bear, we have only just met," I muttered. "You don't know diddly about me or my singing-ness. In fact, I know a lovely song about a sailor from Dublin who has this wench, you see, and the wench has this enormous -"

"I have heard that song many times, Raphaela," the bear growled at me. Was the bear speaking my language, or was I speaking bear?

"Liar," I said, and felt a pair of hands roll my head over so that it was resting on its right side. I was a porcupine, and my spines were sticking into the pillow under my face. The pillow was going to come back up when my head shifted, and I'd have ruined a perfectly good pillow. "Bear, I like you okay so far, since you have not tried to make me your lunch. Please do not try to hug me though because I am a porcupine, and even if I didn't prick you, you are a bear and I am small and you would crush me."

"You're not a porcupine," said the bear.

"You're right," I said, as I felt the pillow detach from my face. My head was rolled over to the other side. My head had gotten less swim-ey, which was good. "I'm a… a concubine."

"Is that so?" the bear asked, sounding only half-interested. It touched the side of my face with its big, furry bear-paws, and I giggled. It tickled.

"I'm married though," I said. "And Bear, I think you're lovely, but if you keep touchin' me with that bear-paw, Cerevus will cut it off."

"That's not my name, Raphaela," the bear said, in less of a growl.

"I know. Your name is Bear," I said, smiling broadly.

"No, it isn't."

"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it, too. I felt quite bad, now. "I just named you without thinking of whether you already had a name. What do they call you in your bear tribe? And seriously Bear, you are going to have to stop touching me with that bear-hand."

"I love you too, Raphaela."

Someone muttered something about applying the final charm, and I suddenly felt infinitesimally better. My head had been cleared of the fuzzy feeling, I realised that I wasn't a beetle or a trout or a mermaid or a porcupine or a concubine, but just a regular girl. And that wasn't a bear standing next to me, but Severus, looking down at me in an odd sort of a way.

"Right," I said, sitting up. "Hi." He inclined his head at me slightly. "Sorry about that. You are of course allowed to touch me whenever you want. It is just over-friendly bears that you have to watch out for."

"Of course," he said. He looked up at Madam Pomfrey. "Does she need extra bed rest, or are serious head injuries the kind of thing you just get better at shrugging off?"


	34. You’re the Doctor, Aren’t You?

Beware y'all, this is a chapter of seemingly innocuous things that EXPLODE into SHIT GETTING EXTREMELY REAL in the next chapter or so. The shit, it will be _so_ real. Like you don't even know.

**Chapter Thirty-Four: You're the Doctor, Aren't You?**

It turned out that I _did_ need extra bed rest, according to Madam Pomfrey. I was in the bed next to Ana, which was lucky, because I could observe her sickness at a close range and then report back to my cousin about just how fine her daughter was. Of course, there was still a week to go until classes started again, so Severus hung out with me up in there most of the time. It was nice, too. I was feeling pretty lucid, despite the whole head injury thing, and I'd probably have been bored out of my skull alone. Ana seemed to get less scared of him in the whole process too, and she'd started referring to him as 'Bear', which made me laugh and made Severus scowl.

"Now, for letters!" I said loudly one day when Severus had finished making me swear that I would be more careful what I rammed my head into at high speeds. "Ana, I must write to your mother. Severus, you must help me, since you're not doing anything else."

"Speaking of letters," said Madam Pomfrey as she bustled into the room. "This came for you at breakfast, Professor Vialle. Since Professor Snape wasn't present I decided it was up to me to deliver it."

"Why weren't you at breakfast?" I asked Severus. Madam Pomfrey handed me the letter but I didn't open it just yet. Breakfast was _awesome_, I didn't know why Severus would have wanted to miss it. Think of the missed opportunities! The cereal! The toast. The post-breakfast celebratory margarita! One always needed a post-breakfast celebratory margarita to commemorate another successful breakfast.

"I was here," he said shortly. I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Come here." He leant forward slightly, looking confused. I punched him hard in the arm, but not in a spousal abuse kind of way. I hoped he'd get a dead arm from that, though. "You need to learn to respect breakfast, Mr. I'm-too-good-for-cereal."

Severus glared at me, eyes widened, as he retreated back to his original seating position. "What on earth was that for?"

"Breakfast is king among foodstuffs."

"Breakfast is not a foodstuff."

"Breakfast is what I say it is."

At this, I turned away in a huff and tore open the letter. After telling Severus to either go and eat something or go and get divorce papers, I cast my eyes down to the letter.

_Hey Raphaela,_

_You didn't tell me you were going back to Hogwarts so soon! I went around to your place for a visit before I went back to my own place but your mum said that you and Severus had gone. Oh well! Oh, and your mum seemed really disappointed that I wasn't wearing a knitted vest. I think her and my mum are in it together._

_Let me know if you come back to London, I'll do pina coladas. I've enclosed the address for my place. Anyway, let me know._

_Love, Eric_

Well, that was sweet. I'd made a new friend, hurrah! A new friend who was genuinely excited to create beverages for me! This was going to be a super-sweet friendship, I could just tell. I pulled some parchment over towards the little desk thingy attached to the hospital bed but only managed to get out a _Dear Eric_ before Severus returned. He swept into the room in a flurry of black and sat down where he had been before, a glare on his face.

"I have eaten a croissant. Are you happy now?" he snapped. I grinned.

"Ecstatic. Look, I got a letter from Eric!" I waved it about at him, and with an odd look on his face, he took it from my outstretched hand and perused it.

"Lovely," he said, sounding like it was anything but. I leant over the parchment in front of me and raised my quill, but it was no use. Severus had broken my train of thought. Not that I'd really had one to begin with, but I could still blame him.

"What should I write?" I asked, glancing at him in a pleading sort of a way. "I can't think of anything. I've just got 'Dear Eric'. I should put something after that, shouldn't I?"

"From Raphaela," he muttered, and I screwed up my nose at him.

"I think that traditionally, words go in between those two sentiments. Words that go together and form sentences."

"Traditionally, shutup."

I snorted. "What about… 'that sounds lovely, I'll be in the greater London area around Easter. See you then'?"

"I wasn't aware you were to be visiting your parents again at Easter," Severus muttered.

"Yeah, me neither. I am now though. Fun!"

"Beyond any measure."

"Want to come with? Do you like pina coladas? Or getting caught in the rain?"

"You are aware of my opinions regarding these things. Stop asking me."

"So that's a no."

"It's a no. I'm sure I'd just get in the way. He might get embarrassed and decide not to invite you to the prom after all."

"You're such a twat sometimes."

I heard a giggle from somewhere behind Severus and he turned in moderate surprise. In doing so, he shifted somewhat and I saw Ana smiling broadly at us from her hospital bed.

"You're jealous," she said, pointing at Severus.

"I most certainly am not," he said, bristling. I let out a bark of laughter.

Ana just smiled wider and turned to look at me. "You're doing it on purpose."

"What?" Well, what was the use of blood relation if she was just going to make accusations at me? We should have been a united front against Severus and his ways. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

"Yes you do," she said, and she was still grinning. "You're making it sound kind-of-joking-not-really, because you know he won't take you seriously any other way."

"I am not," I protested, and ignored Severus' glares. "Why would I do that?"

"Because the only thing you love more than yelling at pigeons is making him squirm."

I pouted. "Fine. Since when did you turn into Dr. Phil anyway?"

"Who?" Severus said, still glaring at me. Ana, however, seemed to know what I meant, and shrugged.

"Not like I've got anything better to do than to listen to you two acting like you're normal people when you're both clinically insane."

"Anastasia Vialle!" I shot, trying to sound like some kind of a disciplinarian. That was what kids responded to, right? I had to do something like that, yes? "I am _taken aback_." Severus had stopped glaring at me and was instead looking incredibly affronted. That wouldn't do. We had to be in the same place, and affronted was the _exact opposite_ of being taken aback. See, I made a funny. It was good in my head.

Severus peered at Ana for a moment before turning back to me. "The child is unnerving me. I think you've had enough of this 'bed rest' nonsense."

"I couldn't agree more," I said, kicking off the blankets and standing up. I had a head rush for a few moments, but I kept my ground and tried to be surreptitious as I stared at the bedside table while my vision tunnelled. "Knew there was a reason I, uh… I married you."

"Are you feeling alright?" Severus queried. I waved a hand dismissively in his direction and kept staring at the table, where the tunnel vision wasn't clearing. It was making my head throb right behind my eyes. Must have been a side-effect from lying down for days on end. I'd have to avoid that in future. Slowly, the throb started to subside and my vision cleared, and I stood up straight again and stared at Ana.

"Yes, Ana, you… um, I hope you learned a valuable lesson from all this. Goodbye." And with that, I took Severus by the elbow and walked swiftly out of the hospital wing, not giving that weird kid another glance.


	35. Au Revoir

HEY Y'ALL. PREPARE FOR SHIT TO GET EXTREMELY REAL.

**Chapter Thirty-Five: Au Revoir**

In the wordless journey down to the dungeons, there was ample time for undistracted rage to simmer. I just couldn't stop thinking about what Ana had said, and I got the feeling Severus was thinking the exact same thing. By the time we got down there, my hands were wringing themselves and I saw that Severus' jaw was clenched tighter than I'd ever seen it. When the door shut behind us, I felt like I was watching a pot that was about to boil over. Everything was creepily silent, but there was a buzz in the air. We were just staring at each other, daring the other to be the one to explode first. Of course, Severus was the master of self-control, and I hated to be the one to back down, so we stood there staring for quite some time. I felt like we should be circling each other with fists raised or something, but we were motionless, Severus leaning back against the writing desk and me standing awkwardly in front of the door.

"Why do you do this?" I asked quietly. The silence had been killing me but I didn't want to be the first to yell.

"_Me?_" barked Severus. It was louder than I was expecting, and I winced a tiny bit. I always hated it when he yelled. "What about you? Pouncing on every single opportunity to impress upon me who you _could_ be with instead."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, I was _joking_ all those times," I said, trying to match him in pitch and anger level. He wouldn't be getting me to back down, no way. "Do you understand what that means? Not serious! Besides, the problem is _you_ and your stupid jealousy!"

"Of course it is," he shouted. "I'm always the problem. _You_ flounce about flirting with every man that glances at you, what do you _expect_?"

"I expect you to trust me," I cried out. Now, we _were_ circling each other, but our fists weren't raised. I was flinging my arms about as I sometimes did when excited, and he was keeping his firmly motionless at his sides. "And every time you don't, it's like you're accusing me of something, when you should _know_ that I'd never do anything like that, because I _wouldn't_."

"How am I supposed to trust you when you manipulate me into jealousy just for your own fun?" he shot back. Now, I was by the writing desk and he was the one in front of the door.

"So you don't trust me then?"

"Don't be stupid, of course I do. I don't _believe_ you think I'm defective just because I get agitated when you play your stupid schoolgirl games."

"That's it, isn't it?" I cried. "You think I'm too stupid and immature for you."

"That's _not_ what I said," he roared.

"It's what you meant, isn't it? You've always thought it, haven't you?"

"Maybe I have," he shouted. "Maybe I don't like that you're still acting like a bloody fifteen-year-old, giggling about how 'awesome' it is to get drunk with the neighbour boy on your parents' alcohol."

"At least I'm not having conniptions every time I don't know where you are," I shouted, feeling my throat begin to scratch. I didn't usually use my voice in this way. "At least I can see you talk to other people without thinking you're going to leave me for them."

He stared at me for a moment. "At least I don't have to pretend other people are after me so that I'll be more highly valued."

A silence rang in the air after that. My jaw was clenched tightly and my eyes blazed with rage like I'd never felt before. He was wearing the same expression as me, but I wanted to stab it off his stupid face with a staple remover. Merlin, what I wanted to do. I wanted to beat him to a bloody pulp. I wanted to hit him with a frying pan. My lips curved into a snarl, my hand found a heavy object on the desk behind me and I flung the bottle of ink in his direction with as much force as I could muster. In a flash, his wand was out and the ink bottle shattered in mid-air, but the force of the spell sent me flying and I smashed through the liquor cabinet to land in a heap of broken glass on the floor. I was dripping with acrid-smelling liquid and blood was pumping in my ears. Pieces of glass embedded themselves in the palms of my hands as I tried, in a daze, to push myself up off the ground. I managed to stand upright and brush most of the glass off me when I looked up at Severus, surprised. He stood there motionless, still holding his wand out, but looking just as surprised as I felt.

"Raphaela, I didn't -"

"No."

I felt my eyes sting but fought to suppress tears, knowing that I couldn't break down right in front of him.

"It wasn't my intention to –"

"Don't."

My breathing came shallow and ragged, and I moved past him towards the doorway. I took my jacket from the coat rack without a word and slipped it on over my old clothes, staring at the door frame intently. The silence was somehow even heavier now. It was almost palpable. I didn't move. I just stared at the door frame.

"Let me fix your hand," he said from behind me as he took my wrist. I wrenched it out of his grasp but remained staring at the door frame.

"Don't… touch me," I said. "Please." Without turning back at him, I pulled the door open but hesitated before stepping out.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know."

"… Will you be back?"

"… I don't know." I closed my eyes tightly, trying to block out what had just happened from my memory. I hadn't just attempted to injure my husband. He hadn't sent me through a glass cabinet. I wasn't about to leave. None of this was happening. "I… I don't think we're going to be okay."

I heard an odd noise from behind me but still didn't turn around. "I love you." He said it in a weird way. Not in a trying-to-make-me-stay kind of way, or a pleading kind of way, but just as a monotone statement. Bloody hell.

I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and walked away.


	36. Regarding the Storage of Acorns

Hey y'all! Yeah, shit's pretty real! We're past the halfway mark now, so if I were you dudes I'd be savouring the shit out of this. Imma miss it when it's over!

**Chapter Thirty-Six: Regarding the Storage of Acorns**

I went to Lucindy's first. I knocked on her door about six times, crying very publicly and embarrassingly in the night, but she was apparently not home. Well, great. That had been my master plan. Where else was there to go? Who could I go to among my friends? I doubted I'd be able to be around Andy and Lacy with their sickeningly perfect couple-ness. Kirk had just moved in with some new girlfriend and I didn't know the address, even if I'd wanted to go and see Her Royal Bitchness. And Pete was just… he wasn't the kind of person I could go to with something like that. I liked him and he was a lot of fun, but I had the feeling that he was only around while the fun was there. He was still just a kid, after all, only about twenty-three or something. Older than Severus said I acted, though. Was I really that bad? Had my horrific annoyingness just gotten to him in the end? Even if he did love me, it just wasn't enough to cover how stupid and immature I was. Merlin, I was a wreck. How was I supposed to grow up anyway? It wasn't like I could just do it, even if I did want to bow to my stupid husband's every stupid demand.

I disapparated from Lucindy's doorway and ended up in front of my parents' house. The lights were off and the blinds were shut. I couldn't go to them with this. I knew how they really felt about Severus. I'd be thrown into the path of a different guy every day, and despite what Severus would like to believe, I didn't want any of them with their stupid sensible haircuts and woollen vests and fancy jobs doing curse-breaking or whatever. Faced with the only option left to me, I pulled the crumpled piece of parchment out of the back pocket of my jeans and tearfully read the address, trying not to smudge it with my stupid, pathetic weepiness. Merlin, what if Severus could see me now, crying over a guy. That was definitely fifteen-year-old behaviour. As I disapparated to somewhere in the middle of London, I wondered what would be proper twenty-eight-year-old behaviour for this situation. Bloody hell, I had no idea. I started by wiping the tears off my face, though. I wandered up to the thin apartment-thing and knocked on the door. After about a minute, it swung open.

"D'you know what time this – Raphaela!" it was Eric, and he was looking tired in striped pyjamas and with messy hair. He perked up somewhat at the sight of me though, which was weird, since I probably looked all puffy and gross, like a creature from the black lagoon or something. "Bloody hell, what're you doing here?"

"I…" I trailed off and burst into tears again, remembering that whole damn fight. "Merlin, I'm so sorry," I said as he ushered me inside and closed the door behind me. "I just… I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"No, no, it's fine," he said, bustling around, turning on lights and putting a kettle on. "Really. Now, what's the matter?"

I took a break from my almost-silent sobs to look at the ceiling and take a few deep breaths. "I don't think Severus loves me anymore. Or rather, I'm quite sure that he can't stand me anymore."

"God, Raphaela," he replied, bringing in two cups of tea. "You're fine. I'm sure he can stand you fine."

I snorted. "That's a sweet thing to say. He keeps yelling at me for acting like I'm sixteen or something though."

"Had you not spoken to each other before getting married?"

I laughed again, something I hadn't thought was possible back at Hogwarts only about half an hour ago. "I think it got too much for him." Eric frowned and I sighed, leaning back in the chair.

Morning found me lying on that couch, though I didn't really remember going to sleep on it. I remembered lying on it and talking to Eric for a very long time, but then the next thing I knew, the front door was slamming shut and I was jerked awake, bright sunlight hitting my eyes. I was still in my clothes from yesterday, but a fuzzy blue blanket had been draped over me. I was reminded momentarily of the night I spent on the daybed at my parents' place just a week or so before, but before I could think about that any further, an owl scratched against a window somewhere. I'd become very used to what an owl's claws sounded like in my experience in the Wizarding world and I recognised it immediately, rushing over to let it in. It dropped a letter on the coffee table and flew off again, and before I could remember my mother telling me never to even _glance_ at someone else's mail, I read my name on the envelope. That was odd. Nobody but Eric even knew I was there. Now that I thought about it, even if anyone were to be tracking me, I disapparated too many times for them to be sure. Not that anyone would be tracking me, but still. I tore the letter open and read it.

_Hey babe!_

_  
Not sure if this owl will get to you. I told it to try and find you, and it's usually pretty good at shit like that. We went to Paris! Well, it was just me and Lacy, really. We invited Kirk but Her Royal Bitchness spazzed out and said she didn't want him going away for the weekend with two Other Women. Bitch. Anyway, he hasn't dumped her yet, but I'm hoping she'll be out on her arse before the week is out. I hear she's got three tits though, so it might be hard to tear him away. Ha ha, not really. I wanted to invite you but Misty said you had to stay at Hogwarts to keep an eye on her kid. If I were you I'd tell Misty where she can shove it. I'll give you a clue, it rhymes with bunt, and begins with a c. Sorry about being cryptic, but I figured you might be with your parents and you know how they get with The Swears. You should tell them where to shove it too._

_Mr. and Mrs. V, if you're reading this, I was absolutely not trying to get Raphie to tell you where to shove anything._

_Anyway, were you at my place last night? My neighbours say they saw a crazy dark-haired woman in a dark blue coat crying very loudly and knocking on my door for about twenty minutes shouting about kicking that stupid fucking waste of skin in the face so hard he'd never make another stupid potion, and I just thought of you. Sorry._

_If it was you, come around today and we'll put our feet together to kick him extra-hard. I'll go for his nads if you want. I hear that's where they store their acorns for the winter months._

_  
If it wasn't you, please forgive me for thinking that you could be described as a crazy woman who yells about kicking people. But that is the kind of thing you'd do._

_Come around anyway, if you can. I miss you!_

_Love love love love love love love,_

_Lucindy_

I giggled as I read her letter, and when it was done I felt a broad smile sweep across my face. At the reminder of what I'd done the previous night, my stomach twisted around and I clenched my eyes shut for a while, but eventually the horror subsided and I mentally did the tri-snap of sass. I didn't need no stinking Severus, not when I had my best friend in the world ever. She'd kick everyone who needed to be kicked, no questions asked. I wrote a quick note to Eric.

_Eric,_

_Thanks for letting me stay here last night and listening to me when I was blubbering and embarrassing myself and stuff like that. I'll be staying with my friend Lucindy though, so I won't be impinging (impinging? Is that the right word? I have no idea) on your hospitality any longer._

_It was nice to see you again._

_Raphaela_

With that done, I left the note on the coffee table, folded up the blanket, and disapparated to Lucindy's. It was just nice at Lucindy's. Her whole house, everything in it, it just reminded me of school and how much fun we had together. And we kept on having fun while I was staying with her. I wore her clothes, since all I had were the ones I'd run away with, we made blended drinks while watching horrifically trashy TV shows, and we got drunk off our arses of an evening and plotted ways to kick Severus so hard in the nads that he'd lose all the acorns he'd saved up for winter and starve to death when hibernation season kicked in. The times, they were good. They were wonderful.


	37. Raphaela Vialle, Spinster and Lunatic

Hey y'all! Yeah, these two are like two cats in a bag, everything one does just rubs the other the wrong way. And don't worry, soon y'all will know just how Severus is handling the sudden alone-ness.

The title of this chapter comes from Bridget Jones, who more often than not reminds me of Raphaela, and of course my spinster and lunatic self. Can you be a spinster when you're barely out of your teens? I say yes.

**Chapter Thirty-Seven: Raphaela Vialle, Spinster and Lunatic**

Before I knew it, February was half over and all I'd done was sit around Lucindy's place, the monotony broken only by the nights we went out. These happened to be all the nights there was cheap beer going at some bar or another, so it was pretty frequent, it being London and all. The time spent neither drunk nor hungover was less than it had ever been in my life, and while I loved having fun with Lucindy, I was starting to feel the effects of being a few years short of thirty. I missed teaching at Hogwarts, but every time I thought of the way I'd said goodbye to Severus, my stomach twisted around in a way that made me feel very queasy. I was right, though. It couldn't have ever worked between us anyway. I'd never really been able to love anyone properly, why should it be different with Severus? Just because he… no, I didn't want to think about anything to do with him ever again. I'd gotten an owl from Hogwarts a week or so before, but I shoved it in a drawer without looking at it. There was a very good chance it was from Severus, and I wasn't ready to hear (or read, for that matter) anything he had to say (or write, I guess).

It just so happened that February the fourteenth rolled around, and Lucindy barrelled her way through the front door as she always did, swore, kicked off her shoes so violently they hit a wall, and leapt into the living room. The routine was like clockwork by now. I'd been watching some ridiculously saccharine movie with the moral being that love actually _is_ all around, or something fruity like that. Why was I watching something that hideously romantic? Because fuck you, that's why. I grinned at Lucindy.

"Happy Valentine's Day," I said with a flourish, brandishing a bunch of brightly coloured flowers at her, wrapped in purple crepe paper. "And chocolate!" I said, displaying the heart-shaped box I'd gotten for her. She smiled so widely I could practically see her molars.

"For _me_?" she said, putting on a mock-swoon as she walked into the room. She then showed me what she'd been hiding behind her back (and for the record, yes, I should've noticed that she was hiding something. I'm not the smartest knife in the drawer. Or was that sharpest? Not the brightest crayon in the box? Not the verbingest noun in the noun, anyway), a bouquet of red roses and a heart-shaped candy box almost identical to the one I was thrusting at her. "For you!" she said, now smiling so hard her eyes were nearly squinted shut.

"And," we said together, reaching deep into our respective handbags. "The one thing that receives the most love from the both of us." We pulled out identical bottles of dark rum and squealed.

"God, we're sad," Lucindy said, plonking herself down on the couch and setting my roses between us with a cellophane-y crunch. "What's this we're watching?"

"Well, right now, _he's _trying to resist the temptation of that little skank in the miniskirt, but he's not trying very hard," I said, glaring at the TV disapprovingly. "Stay with your wife, guy," I cried out, as if he could hear me. "That skank is just a skank doing skankly things to be a skank."

"She's all young, though," Lucindy observed, now ploughing through her chocolate. "When is he going to get another chance to tap that kind of tail?"

I shrugged. "I just hate how much it hurts his wife, even if the skank didn't even get to first base."

"Oh, we're still using the base system?" Lucindy queried. She stood up and went to the kitchen, and when she came back she had two huge glasses and a bottle of soda in her arms. She mixed us some strong drinks in record time and practically chugged half of hers in one go. "What are we, thirteen?"

"Probably," I muttered sadly, staring into my own glass before copying Lucindy and chugging half of it. I regretted that soon after, as it burned my throat and made my stomach turn more than it already was. "What do you say, Luce? Want to get drunk off our arses and watch stupidly romantic movies until one of us caves and starts crying about how love abandoned us?"

"Yeah, I want to repeat half our lives," Lucindy said, rolling her eyes. "Besides, you're married. Love didn't abandon you at all. Anyway, tonight's no good for me. _I_ have a _date_."

Oh, great, now Lucindy was getting all lovey-dovey with some guy and I'd be the sad old spinster sitting with a bottle of spirits, weeping as some dashing man tells a clumsy, pathetic dork of a woman that he likes her just as she is. Not thinner, not cleverer, not with slightly bigger breasts or a slightly smaller nose. Oh, what was the point? I knew every line to those stupid movies anyway.

"Raphie?" Lucindy said when I didn't reply. "I can cancel if you want me to."

"No, no," I said hurriedly. Merlin, the last thing I needed was for Lucindy to be spending pity-time with me. "Don't do that. It's Valentine's Day, for fuck's sake, don't stay in with a sad old woman getting drunk and watching sad movies. Go out, go pork some poor, unsuspecting boy who doesn't know what a horror you are."

"Love you too," Lucindy said, giving me an air-kiss on one cheek before dashing upstairs to get ready. I tried to smile, but it faded from my face as soon as she left the room. The movie was just ending. Everyone was in love and things were wonderful. Bloody movie. I put on something violent and zombie-filled and finished off my drink in one go.

After a few horror movies where I imagined Severus as every bloody victim of the serial killer slash zombie horde slash ghost, it started to lose its appeal. Lucindy had convinced me to keep my cell phone even after I went to stay at Hogwarts permanently, and now that I was away from the place, it was working again. No use though, every time I checked it there still weren't any messages. I sighed and put on that stupid sickly-sweet movie again, and thought just maybe, this time he'll try harder and resist the skank. He never did though.


	38. Dire

Hey y'all! I am getting so many story alert and favourite story notifications which are really rad, but you know what else is rad? Reviews. Yeah. I said it. Love y'all! :3 Oh and I thought I had the letter-reading NEXT chapter but akshully it's THIS chapter so I guess THE WAIT IS OVER?

**Chapter Thirty-Eight: Dire**

The boredom was starting to get to me. Lucindy was still on her date, and it was ten in the morning the next bloody day. Must have been one hell of a date. After I'd woken up, chugged a pint of water to remedy my hangover, and eaten a bowl of cereal, I went back up to Lucindy's spare room which I'd adopted as my temporary lodgings. There was pretty much nothing to do. I didn't feel like watching any more movies or just channel surfing, and the only reading materials at Lucindy's were trashy magazines. I'd read all of those anyway, and now I was fully up-to-date on the ways to lose four inches from your waistline by next week. How convenient.

My mind strayed to the letter from Hogwarts that I'd angrily shoved in a drawer, and I thought hard about it as I got back into bed. It might've been important, after all. Maybe there'd been a fire and my things had gotten burnt up. Maybe Ana had gotten worse and died. No, don't think that. She was annoying, but there was no way I'd forgive myself if I'd jinxed it by thinking that. Well, there was only one thing to do. I ripped open the envelope and looked at the letter, written in McGonagall's neat script.

_Dear Raphaela,_

_I wouldn't do this ordinarily, but I think the situation calls for it. You need to come back._

At this point, I stopped reading and let the letter fall onto the bedspread. I didn't know what was so important that it required my immediate attention, and I didn't want to know. Well, maybe I did want to know. I picked up the letter again and took a deep breath before reading on.

_Severus will not speak to any members of staff except for what is strictly necessary. I have called him to my office many times but he simply stands there in silence until I dismiss him._

So Severus was getting a bit sad, was that my bloody fault? I wasn't going to hold myself accountable for his actions.

_I have been getting reports that he is shouting at students in possibly every one of his classes, and he actually cursed one of the students just last week._

Well, bloody hell. That actually sounded pretty serious, after what he'd said a year and a half ago about the way he strictly adhered to the rules of Hogwarts. Hexing a kid sounded like a pretty major infraction.

_If it were anyone else I would have had no choice but to fire him immediately, but considering the amount of time he has spent at the school and his current issues (you) I have decided to give him another chance. But I strongly believe that he will continue to self-destruct unless you return. I don't want to lose both my Potions Masters._

_Sincerely,_

_Minerva McGonagall_

I lay there for a moment, staring at the letter that I held above my face with both hands. What was I going to do? I still hated the idea of going back just because Severus was turning into some kind of thin, pale Hulk, and Merlin knew that it kind of made me want to go back _less_, but McGonagall had sounded really serious. And I believed her when she said that she wouldn't ordinarily write. She must have been really worried. But damn it, I'd have put my head in a meat grinder before I let myself take responsibility for someone else's actions. It _wasn't my fault_ that Severus had gone mad. I wasn't about to go back and tell him that I was sorry for everything, because I wasn't. Besides, McGonagall had written that letter ages ago. Severus was probably already fired, and they'd gotten another Potions Master to replace him. He'd go back to his old place down Spinner's End, I'd find somewhere of my own (because Merlin knew I couldn't live with Lucindy 24/7, it'd kill me) and we'd get old and alone, still married but on different sides of the universe.

Without really knowing why, a choking sob expelled itself from me and that was it. The floodgates were open. I tore the letter, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it violently at the rubbish bin, then brought my hands to my face and continued to cry embarrassingly loudly. Good thing nobody was home, or they'd think I'd have gone mad. _Why_ had we yelled at each other like that? Why did I hate his jealousy so much? Why couldn't he have stayed in love with me, just as I was? I was too stupid and puerile for _him_, with all his… his potions, and… uh… his… desks?

I heard the front door click downstairs and I silenced myself abruptly, wiping my face and trying to fan the sting away from my eyes. Lucindy called my name from the landing and I took a deep breath before jumping out to the top of the staircase. Her hair was messy and she was wearing the same clothes she'd left in last night. That _scoundrel_.

"Someone got some lovin'," I called out in a singsong voice, and she smiled.

"You are damn right someone did," she yelled back. As she took off her coat and shoes by the door, I padded downstairs to meet her, hoping my eyes weren't all puffy and tear-stained.

"Like him then?" I asked.

"Oh, god no. He was boring as a dustbin. So pretty though." I snorted, and she grinned back at me. "How was your night? Do anything fun?"

"Oh, this and that," I shrugged as we went into the living room together. She flicked on the TV and started devouring her chocolates again. It was some news report about riots in some country that I couldn't even pronounce the name of. Boring. I wrestled the remote from Lucindy and flicked it over to something else. A wildlife ranger or something was taking care of an injured owl. Boring. The rest of the channels held the same amount of interest for me, so I just tossed the remote back to Lucindy and tried to get as comfortable as I could on the couch.

"Sho," said Lucindy thickly through her mouthful of chocolate. "Up fer goin' ou' t'nigh'?"

"Like you even have to ask that," I said, smiling.

-----

STAY TUNED Y'ALL, SHIT IS ABOUT TO GET EVEN REALER. NEXT CHAPTER: DRUNKEN MISHAPS.


	39. Even More Dire

Hey y'all! I really loved writing this chapter, even though I was kind of worried it would come off as being TOO SOAP OPERA PLOT-LIKE, but I got to get drunk and think of funny things and that's always a plus. Did I mention I LOVE doing field research for Raph's drunken behaviour? Fun fact: If you call it 'field research' you won't feel bad about spending all your money on shakers and slurring a conversation with a taxi driver SO ACCENTED you actually don't have any idea what he's saying. Anyway, enough about me. That is not what y'all are here for.

**Chapter Thirty-Nine: Even More Dire**

That night was a blur, really. I'd borrowed Lucindy's clothes, yet again, and the pale yellow dress didn't look terrible on me. I'd thought it would make me look all washed out or something, but Lucindy said it was good, and who was I to argue with her? We mostly stayed at the one bar all night, really, since we hadn't made plans to meet anyone anywhere and the beer was good where we were.

"So," Lucindy said loudly. We were sitting at a table together, a table littered with empty jugs. The music was too loud to be able to speak comfortably but we didn't mind. Well, I didn't mind, and Lucindy hadn't complained. "Just like the old days, huh?"

"So, so, so just like the days that of those that were," I said, stumbling over my words as I struggled to focus. Lucindy had turned into two of herself and I squeezed one eye shut so that she returned to a single person. Lucindy snorted.

"You're… you're _drunk_," she said, slumping over the table to waggle a finger in my face. "Girly, you're so… _drunk_."

"You're way more drunk than I am," I retorted, though I didn't really know if that was true. I checked the time on the big wall clock. It was just gone midnight. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few of the other occupants of the bar coming towards us. "Don't look now," I said as I turned back to Lucindy, "but there are _people heading in this direction_." Obviously, she craned her neck and looked, then giggled as they made it over to us. They were a group of three, two guys and one girl. They barely looked old enough to drink, really, but that didn't stop me from shouting out a _very _enthusiastic greeting when they introduced themselves. The girl looked like a young version of me, really. Well, in that she was clearly drunk off her arse and looked like she just did not give a shit about anything. Awesome. I liked that girl. I was cornered into talking to one of the guys, though, while the other guy was clearly trying to crack onto Lucindy. The guy I was talking to was nice enough, though. I mostly just talked about beer, and had to try _very _hard not to mention anything from my life at Hogwarts, since we were in a Muggle bar and there was no telling whether or not our companions were Wizarding.

Eventually, I got bored though. The guy was pretty, there was no doubting that, but all he talked about was different colours of wood stain. What the hell was the deal with that? And Lucindy wasn't any entertainment for me, as she was getting all giggly over that dumb young guy who was _still_ hitting on her. Bloody hell, if he got any closer they'd cease to be separate organisms.

"Luce," I said, leaning over the table. She turned to me and smiled. "I kind of wanna go." Lucindy nodded, scrawled her phone number on the guy's hand, and accompanied me out into the freezing cold winter night. "Sorry 'bout that," I said as we staggered together towards the street. "Whoa, when did they put curbs into these roads? That's… that's a fire hazard."

"You don't know what you're talking about, you stupid drunk," Lucindy laughed, almost doubling over. This seemed to not go very well with the staggering, since she almost toppled onto her face and would have smashed her head had I not pulled her back at the last second. I was a life-saver, I was. "S'okay, anyway. Your guy was way hotter than my guy back in there, d'you give him your number?"

"I'm _married_, Luce," I said, more out of impulse than anything else. "I can't go around… gallivanting… and things, and stuff."

"But is what we _do_," Lucindy protested as we wandered. There was some kind of kerfuffle going on down a side street and the commotion made me pause to stare. A group of angry-looking chavs were arguing with each other quite forcefully about something. I knew that their kind hated to be looked at, but I couldn't look away in my inebriated state. "C'mon, Raphie," Lucindy muttered, tugging at my sleeve. "We shouldn't be here any longer than we have to be."

"No fighting," I called out, since all capacities for better judgement had gone out the window with the third jug. Not that I'd actually thrown a jug out of the window, but the metaphor still stood. "We should love each other and give hugs with rainbows to destroy negativity." The chavs didn't show any sign of having even heard me, so wrapped up were they in their own dispute. Then, a loud crack rang out into the night air, and I felt my shoulder being thrown back somewhat. I didn't fall to the ground, but it was a close one. I looked down at my shoulder and saw quite a nasty-looking wound bleeding profusely. "How did _this_ happen?" I asked myself in wonder. "Lucindy, check this shit out!" I tried to raise my arm to get her attention, as she was leaning against a shop window a few metres away, but that sent waves of pain shooting through me. I lowered my arm and gasped. "Luce!" I called, and she looked over to me. I staggered over to her, and saw that the pretty yellow dress I'd borrowed from her was now half-coated in blood. "Merlin, I'm so sorry about your dress," I muttered. She looked me up and down, a horror-struck expression on her face.

"Raphie!" she cried, but before I could respond, a wave of light-headedness overcame me and everything went black.

-----

A/N: I too have been so drunk I've gotten between fights, not to break them up as Raph does, but because OH MY GOD I LOVE YOUR SHOES. I tell people I like their shoes when I don't really like their shoes because it's nice to have your shoes noticed and I need a lot of good karma to offset the terrible things that I do.


	40. A Little Less Dire

THE SHOCKING CONCLUSION to Raph's injury! Will she make it? Will she DIE OR SOMETHING? STAY TUNED, BITCHES.

**Chapter Forty: A Little Less Dire**

I think I was dreaming. I was hanging out with Severus again, like we used to. Just reclining on a couch, or the bed, or wherever. It was a pretty good dream, as far as dreams go. I mean, it didn't even have George the talking kitty in it, so it obviously wasn't perfect, but at least I wasn't being chased by Inferi or anything horrid like that. Anyway, I regained some sort of consciousness eventually and was surprised at the bright light violating my retinas with such impudence. I didn't open my eyes straightaway, but I screwed up my nose and breathed in deeply. What had I done the previous night? Just gone out with Lucindy, right? Oh, and got hit on by some guy who was probably only about sixteen. And yelled at chavs. Oh, bloody hell. If there was one thing that you should not do, ever, in the world, it's yell at chavs. There was a lot of fuzziness after that, though. I supposed Lucindy must have gotten me home somehow.

"Raphie?" came Lucindy's tentative voice from my right and my eyes snapped open. This was weird. I wasn't in Lucindy's spare room. Everything was quite white and bright, and it disoriented me quite severely. Where was I? I tried to lift my hands to push my hair back, but my left shoulder sparked a wave of excruciating pain and I relented. What was the deal with that? I turned and saw Lucindy sitting in a plastic chair next to the bed.

"Uh… where am I?"

"Hospital."

"Um… why?"

"Jesus, Raphie," she said, looking at me with an odd, wild look on her face. "Don't you remember? You've been _shot_."

Okay, so I laughed. What else was I supposed to do though? Obviously I hadn't actually been shot. Had I? "What, the chavs are carrying guns now? I thought all they did was knife you."

Lucindy giggled. "I think these ones were better equipped than the av-er-age chav."

"Okay Yogi," I muttered. Lucindy's face fell and she stared at me with doleful eyes. "Um… thanks for getting me to the hospital, I guess. Not bleeding to death is pretty okay."

She looked at me, confused, for a moment, then nodded. "Right, you don't remember." Uh oh. What was happening now? What didn't I remember? Had I pooped myself when I passed out? Merlin, please let me not have pooped myself. "You know, it was the weirdest thing," Lucindy said in a surreptitious sort of way, leaning forwards and whispering. "You staggered over to me all bloody and with a gaping hole in your chest the size of Wales. I was so surprised and so drunk, I just stood there, I was _completely_ horrified."

"Oh," I said. "Well, whatever. I'm fine now."

"No, seriously, I didn't do _anything_," Lucindy said, still looking at me dolefully. "You'd fainted or something and you were lying there, bleeding, and I was just _staring_ down at you."

"But… you called the ambulance eventually, though?" I asked warily. "I mean, since I'm not dead…"

"No, this is the weird part," she breathed. "Severus, he just _appeared_ there. I mean, he apparated. No one was around, so it was okay, but can you believe it?"

"What?" I was dumbfounded. "How did he know where I was?"

"I don't know," she replied, leaning back in her chair. "I don't think he knew either. I mean, he appeared, and then he looked really confused, like he hadn't meant to do it or he didn't know where he was or something. Then he saw me standing there, and he glared at me, and he was all like, 'what did you do, you stupid girl?' or something like that. Then… I mean, this part's kind of like, wow."

"What part?" I asked. This story was just getting better and better. It should have been a trashy TV storyline, because Merlin knew I'd gotten familiar with those during my time at Lucindy's. "And if you roll credits and I have to wait another bloody day to find out the rest, I'm stabbing you in the eye." Lucindy snorted.

"Well, he saw you, didn't he? Lying there, all bloody, with your eyes closed. I mean, I think he thought you were dead or something."

"And I suppose he drew me up onto a white horse and brought me back to life with true love's first kiss, right?" I said sulkily. I mean, I didn't want to think that Lucindy was lying to me, but it was just so improbable. Severus, magically coming to my rescue and then not sticking around to find out if I'd lived or died? Yeah, that wasn't happening.

"I'm being serious, Raphie. Anyway, you had a pulse, so he tried to disapparate you to St. Mungo's, but all that happened was he went all squiggly for a moment then went back to normal. So he yelled at me that if I didn't call an ambulance in the next four nanoseconds, he'd come at my feet with a cheese grater and work his way up until I was dead. And I'm sure you know how terrifying he can be when he's pissed off."

"Yeah…" I muttered. "But why isn't he here now, then?"

"Well," Lucindy said, leaning forward once more in that surreptitious whispery way. "After you got put in the ambulance, only one of us was allowed to go with you, and he told me not to tell you he'd been there, on pain of death. Not cheese-grater death though, just regular death."

"You're telling me anyway, though," I said, smiling at her. She made a raspberry sound and waved a hand dismissively.

"Who am I going to do more for, my best friend since forever or some cranky old vampire who's just threatened to come at me with a kitchen implement?" I snorted. This was the Lucindy I knew. "Gotta hand it to him though, if he hadn't appeared there I probably just would have stared at you until you were dead."

"So why haven't they totally healed me yet?" I asked, thinking about the pain in my shoulder.

"We're… well, we're not at St. Mungo's. I couldn't exactly drunk-apparate you there, and I didn't know if they had an ambulance service, so I had to call the Muggle emergency line."

"So…" I started, thinking about what was to be done next.

"So we should get you to St. Mungo's. The doctors here say you'll be fine, it missed all your internal bits, just a broken rib or two. They'll take care of that over there though."

"No," I muttered. "No, I've got to go back to Hogwarts. He saved my life, I should… I should get him a thank-you scarf or something."

"Raphie, just let me get someone who'll take a look at you first," Lucindy said, standing up. She walked out to the hallway and I closed my eyes. I hated just abandoning her in the hospital when she was clearly so worried about me and guilty about her inaction the previous night, but this was important. I disapparated.

-----

A/N: Ooh, where is she going! Actually, it's kind of obvious where she's going. I don't know why I asked that. Anyway there was a teeny tiny callback to the first fic in this chapter, but don't worry if you didn't get it.


	41. The Neverending Monologue Redux

Hey sugarmuffins! The SHOCKING CONCLUSION to MEGAFIGHT 3000. Eh... not really much to say about it really. So here you go.

**Chapter Forty-One: The Neverending Monologue Redux**

I landed in the middle of my old bedroom at my parents' house. I couldn't well go around in a hospital gown, after all. I changed into proper clothes, but had to go barefoot since nearly all of my shoes were at Hogwarts. Well I'd soon fix that. I disapparated just outside the boundaries of Hogwarts and walked up slowly, so as not to overexert myself. I _had_ just been shot, after all. Eventually I made it up to the castle and pushed open the front doors. I was getting out of breath, and one look at the bandage covering my wound showed that it was bleeding quite profusely. Well, that was a bad sign. My feet were also about to drop off me from the sheer cold of the ground outside. It wasn't snow-covered, since spring was almost upon us, but it was still bloody cold. I clutched each of my feet in succession as I hopped towards the staircase going down. Thankfully, since I was on the ground floor, I didn't have far to go to get to the dungeons. It was a Thursday, so I crept past the classroom where someone had apparently melted the bottom of their cauldron, and finally made it to Severus' quarters.

The silver plaque on the door was the same as always, and the door itself was unlocked, which was quite lucky, as I had left my keys on the bedside table when I'd… when I'd stormed out and… left. I blinked a lot and breathed in and out until I felt like I was ready to open the door, then I pushed it open. I'd been gone for over a month but it looked like I'd been gone for bare hours. There was no fire crackling in the grate, the bed was unmade, every single curtain was shut tight, and worst of all, the remnants of the liquor cabinet I'd been flung through remained scattered on the ground. I even saw a few drops of blood on the carpet over there. Yikes. I stood there in that doorway, staring at the aftermath of our fight for Merlin knows how long.

I don't know how I knew he was behind me, but I knew. I could feel him there, I guess. I waited for him to say something to me, or to touch me on the arm, or to ask how I was doing after that whole 'being shot' thing. I don't know how long I waited, or whether I even wanted him to speak to me, but eventually I heard him walk away and leave me in my silent standing. I finally walked into the room itself and let out the breath I didn't know I'd been holding in. I struggled to breathe properly, seeing as it was kind of a prerequisite for being alive, but it came shallow and ragged, like I'd just been crying.

I realised, far too late, that I didn't even know what I was doing at Hogwarts. Why had I even gone back? What was I going to _do_ there? I'd meant to say something to Severus about kicking Lucindy into calling me an ambulance, but he'd just been right there and I couldn't even bring myself to turn around and look at him. Well, that glass wasn't going to get rid of itself, and Severus wasn't about to do it. I should probably fix that, or someone would cut themselves on it. Severus was probably going to get tetanus off those chunks. Do you get tetanus from glass? I don't know.

I pulled the dustbin over to the mess and sat next to it, picking it all up, tiny piece by tiny piece. I could've used magic, but to be honest I didn't really feel like it. It wasn't like I had anything better to do, anyway. Hours passed, and I'd taken out a fair-sized chunk of the glassy mess. By some miracle of nature, I managed not to slice my hands open on the broken glass, and soon enough, I was just reaching over to pick up the last piece of glass on the ground. I must have jinxed myself, though, because it slipped in my hands and sliced a slit into the palm of my right hand. I swore loudly and shook my hand, succeeding only in spraying blood on my face. Smooth. I dashed over to the chest of drawers and pulled out one of my t-shirts, and after I cleaned my face off, I pressed the material against the cut on my hand. It still hurt like an absolute bitch though, and after giving the carpet a once-over to make sure I'd gotten _all_ the glass, I reclined on the bed and clenched my fist to try and stop the bleeding. What was it with me and getting injured?

I bit my lip against the pain and swore some more before I saw a familiar black shape out of the corner of my eye. He was standing in the doorway, but froze when he saw me sitting on the bed. I kept my eyes fixed on the dustbin to the right of the foot of the bed, and didn't move. I didn't really know what we were doing, just staying weirdly motionless like that, but it was the only thing I could bring myself to do. I needed to say something though. I breathed in, then hesitated. What could I say? What was I even thinking?

"I…" I started. I was still staring at that dustbin.

"Don't," he said hoarsely. "Doesn't… doesn't matter."

And it didn't. I looked up towards the door, looked at him properly for the first time in over a month. He looked awful, to tell the truth. He was even paler than I remembered and he looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. Now _that_ was appealing. He walked over and sat down next to me, reclining against the head of the bed.

"I missed you," I finally choked out. He turned his head toward me slightly and glanced down at the shirt that was currently soaking up most of the blood from my body.

"Let me fix that," he said. I tossed the shirt in the laundry basket and gave him my bloody hand. He touched his wand to the jagged cut and it vanished immediately. "There's blood on your chest." I pulled the neckline of my top across and pulled off the bandage that was by now soaked with blood. He touched his wand to my bullet wound and I watched it close up and felt the pain fade away. I let my head fall sideways onto his shoulder.

"What did I tell you?" I muttered. "Everything always turns out okay in the end."

"You've never told me that."

"I probably thought it at some point."

"Merlin, I've…" he hesitated somewhat. "I've found your absence to be disagreeable."

"Yeah," I muttered, feeling my eyes droop closed. "I've missed you too."


	42. The Neverending Dialogue Redux

**Chapter Forty-Two: The Neverending Dialogue Redux**

I woke up the next morning and felt, in a weird way, that I'd never been happier to see Severus lying next to me. I'd gone the past month and a half sleeping alone in bed, and while I didn't realise it at the time, it was the worst thing _ever_ not to be with someone you love. I was just blinded by my anger. Of course, it helped that I woke up to see him looking back at me. I smiled at him in a calculating sort of way.

"What are _you_ looking at?" I said. He shrugged.

"You snore in a completely monstrous way," he replied. I shifted closer to him and turned to lie on my back, pulling his right arm around the back of my neck. I had a bloody month and a half of reluctant affection to get up-to-date on, and I fully intended to make the most of it.

"I'm sure you were glad to see the back of me then," I said pleasantly. He let out an exasperated sigh.

"Now you understand how dangerous London is, then?" he said, as if I hadn't said anything. "Especially for a clumsy, drunken imbecile of a girl such as yourself."

"Yes, sir," I said. So I was making fun of him a little, so hex me. Besides, I'd decided to just let go all the times he'd end up practically calling me a stupid little girl. I _was_, and if he stayed with me, then that was proof enough that he didn't mind. "Please don't take points from my house, or we won't win the house cup -"

"Very amusing," he said, though he sounded as if it was anything but. Now, I had to face a decision that may have ended up with Lucindy's life on the line. To tell him I knew that he'd apparated to me when I was shot, or not to tell him? Oh, hell with it, I'd tell him. And he wouldn't kill Lucindy if I asked him not to, surely.

"So tell me," I said, drawing it out. "When I got shot, and you apparated to me, how did you know where I was?"

"I see I shouldn't have expected your horrible, vulgar friend to keep silent on that topic," he muttered. "Remind me to cut off her ears."

"You'll do no such thing," I said, trying my best to sound like a bossy mother or something. "Lucindy's lovely, you just have to get to know her."

"I'll do no such thing," he said. I got the feeling he was making fun of me.

"You're avoiding the question anyway. How did you know to come?"

He sighed. "To be entirely honest, that particular magic eludes me," he muttered. Great, now it'd be a mystery that I wouldn't be able to solve. _Super_. "It probably has ties to the fundamental tenets of apparition. One would think about somewhere they needed to be, and they would instantaneously be there."

"And you needed to be in front of a fish and chip shop at one in the morning?"

"Obviously, it was subconscious apparition, foolish girl," he said brusquely. That was the Severus I knew and loved. "Of course, since I am incredibly powerful, it is not entirely ridiculous to suggest that I hold the power to apparate subconsciously."

I snorted. "And you just love me _so_ much that you knew I was in mortal peril and just popped by to save me, is that right?"

He shrugged. "Apparition has served its purpose. It transported me to where I needed to be." I let my head loll towards him and I smiled. It was good to be back. "Tell me, where on earth have you _been_ this past month?"

"Lucindy's," I said shortly. "Except that first night. I went to her place but she'd gone to Paris with Lacy, so Eric let me crash on his couch."

"I'm sure he did," Severus muttered icily. I wanted so badly to mess with his head a little, to hint that I was _so_ incredibly attracted to Eric and would probably be dating the crap out of him if I weren't already married, but I decided against it. This was a new Raphaela Vialle, the kind of girl who didn't make things up just to make her husband squirm. "I'm sure you had a lovely time."

Remember: you are a new girl. "Actually I was a blubbering mess, so I looked like some creature from the black lagoon. We just talked, mostly about you. And the next morning I left without seeing him."

"I see."

New girl, new girl. "And I think he's really horrid. And if you want, I can hold him down while you beat him up." He snorted. "Come on, you could even break his nose."

"What you're doing is unnecessary," he replied, but I heard a smile in his voice.

"Just letting you know that nobody is as wonderful as you are," I said. "If you want, I won't have pina coladas with him. I will make no promises about getting caught in the rain, though."

He looked down at me, an odd look on his face. "I will not make decisions on what you are and are not allowed to do," he said. "I understand that you dislike that kind of thing."

"Yeah, if your allowances are uninvited and baseless," I said matter-of-factly. "I'm in a very benevolent mood right now, though. You should really take advantage of it. I'd agree to anything."

"Is that so?" Severus asked mildly as a knock came at the door. I swung my legs out from under the covers and pulled on a pair of jeans. The knocking at the door wasn't stopping, it sounded weirdly urgent and agitated.

"Alright, I'm coming, keep your hair on," I called as I meandered over to the door. "Merlin, I sound like my mother." I pulled it open and saw Ana standing there, looking horrified and breathless. When she saw me, she immediately began talking extremely fast.

"Oh my god I'm so sorry for what I said in the hospital wing it's not true nothing's true you're both completely normal and not insane in any way I'm so sorry I made you fight like that are you back for good are you staying please don't get a divorce because of me my mum will kill me are you staying?" She breathed, eventually, which was good since she was turning an odd shade of blue.

"Ana, relax," I said, trying to ruffle her hair in a patronising way. "It was just silly anyway. None of it really matters. And yes, I'm back for good." I craned my head to look back at Severus. "If he'll consent to keeping me around."

"Don't be stupid," was his answer. I smiled.


	43. Scrutiny of Festivities

I owe the invention of Smug Married Couples entirely to Helen Fielding, the amazingly talented and funny author of Bridget Jones's Diary. If there is anyone in the universe who has not yet either read the books or seen the movies, I strongly suggest doing just that. IT IS LIKE LOOKING IN A MIRROR.

Oh, and I just saw the headline "Romanian president slaps child in face". I know I shouldn't laugh, but god _damnit _that made me giggle for five straight minutes.

And one more thing: Hold onto your pants, beloved readers. Shit is about to get real. Again.

**Chapter Forty-Three: Scrutiny of Festivities**

Oh, the wonders of Easter. It was almost upon us, probably. I'd never really gotten the specifics of when Easter was. I knew that it wasn't on a fixed date like Christmas or Halloween, the _proper_ holidays, but it was still an important holiday. It was a holiday where one can eat as much chocolate as one likes. I mean, if that was the rules of Easter, then I pretty much celebrated Easter every day, but still. It was nice to be vilified in one's overeating.

Most importantly of all, it was nearing the one-year anniversary of the day I had said 'I do' and become part of a Smug Married Couple. Lucindy said that I wasn't _like_ the other Smug Married Couples, because I didn't throw fancy dinner parties and attempt to show everyone what a perfect little housewitch I was, and I didn't brag to everyone who would listen about my child's pre-natal spelling test scores. At this, I immediately wanted to throw a fancy dinner party to show everyone that I wasn't a complete spaz in the kitchen, and told Lucindy that being a perfect little housewitch didn't even come into the equation. And WHAT WAS SHE TALKING ABOUT, PRE-NATAL SPELLING TEST SCORES. YOU ARE SURELY MAKING THIS UP. It turned out she _was_ making this up, and my freak-out was for naught. Bloody Lucindy.

Anyway, it was also nearing the time I said I'd return to London to stay at my parents' house. After I'd promised Severus that I wouldn't get mad at him if he wanted to tell me what to do regarding Eric and pina coladas, he'd said something along the lines of 'I _know_ what you get like after a few drinks. You are not going anywhere near him unless I breathalyse you first.' Well, blah to him. As promised, I didn't get angry or sullen, I just thanked him for his input and informed him that I was going to get absolutely squiffy around the next young man my parents decided to introduce me to. Then I had to reassure him that I was kidding before he bludgeoned me with an umbrella. Ah, good times.

So, at five p.m. on a Saturday evening, either a day or a week or something before the actual Easter day (it was on a Sunday, right? I don't know) I bid farewell to the cold, icky dungeons and landed in the lounge room of my parents' place, nearly killing the cat. It wasn't my fault that my parents hadn't seen fit to shut Henry away somewhere, they knew full well what I was like regarding my landings and their alignment with certain cats. Anyway, once Henry had run behind a recliner and hissed at me for _daring_ to invade his personal space with my foot, my parents hugged me and asked WHY ON EARTH Severus hadn't come with me. Of course, I couldn't give them his reply, which was a stern 'I'd rather eat my own toenails', so I just spouted some absolutely filthy lie about him having tons of work to do. Of course, that invited them to speculate on my own workload, to be specific, why I never seemed to be doing any. I reassured them that no, Mother, I'm not whoring myself to my husband in exchange for him doing all the work, I just don't talk about what I do because it isn't very interesting. You'd think that my father, being some kind of senior manager at some boring company for boring people, would know _all about_ boring jobs, but no, he sided with my mother and decided that I must be whoring. Bloody parents. Always assuming I'm in prostitution.

But the point was, the apparition had left me in a worse state than I cared to recall. I felt sick, even, something that I hadn't felt in apparition since I was eighteen. Eventually, my stomach had turned to iron and even the longest-distance apparition caused me nary a flutter, but this time felt like the first.

"Whoa," I muttered, relinquishing my grip on my bag. "Trippy." I moved slowly over and sat on the recliner that Henry had just darted behind, causing some low growls from behind me.

"What's the matter, dear?" my mother queried in her bustling way. I put a hand up somewhat dismissively.

"Nothing," I muttered. "Just a bad trip. My stomach's decided that after thirteen or so years of apparition, it doesn't like it anymore."

"Well, don't be sick on the couches, dear, we've just had them done," was my mother's expected reply. "You know, I myself get quite travel-sick on apparition voyages."

"Yeah," I said, feeling my stomach return to normal. "But you've got the constitution of a duck. You can't even do shots. I saw you try it at the Christmas lunch when I was fourteen. You threw up in Aunt Sally's sink."

My mother went very pink in the face and turned to the fireplace, presumably to avoid my father's incredulous and amused stare. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Rapha," she said. "Now, off to bed with you, or you'll be all grumpy in the morning."

"It's half past five in the afternoon."

"Excellent. The sooner you're in bed, the sooner the Easter Bunny will come."

"Holy shit, I'm still getting eggs at twenty-eight? _Sick_."

"Rapha! Language!"

"Sorry, Mum. I said holy ship, after the Titanic, but you must have misheard. I read that the hearing's the first thing to go, when you get old."

"Excuse me?"

"It's okay, I'll learn sign language if you need me to."

"Go. To. Bed."

"… Yes Mum."


	44. Down with the Sickness

Sup bitches! Today I realised that hangovers exist because there needs to be a downside to drunkenness. What did y'all realise today? I bet it's the same thing.

**Chapter Forty-Four: Down with the Sickness**

My eyes snapped open to a dark room, lit only with fading glow-in-the-dark stars and moons that surrounded my light fixture. I glanced over to the clock radio. It was four in the morning. I'd awoken because of my churning stomach. Maybe I'd gotten food poisoning. Maybe it was alcohol-induced. Since I hadn't drunk anything since lunch the previous day (a halfway-through-the-day celebratory fishbowl daiquiri, to reward myself for making it twelve of the twenty-four hours) I could rule out alcohol-related stomach mishaps, but that only left food poisoning. What was the last thing I'd eaten? Right, I'd gone down to Hogsmeade and eaten practically my body weight in chimmy changas as a post-halfway-through-the-day-celebratory-fishbowl-daiquiri snack. It wasn't my fault they were so delicious, though. And the six shots of vodka I'd put into the fishbowl really didn't dampen my appetite. Severus had reprimanded me on my return, but I'd shut him up by telling him that at least I'd be going to London in an hour so he wouldn't hear my Mexican food farts all night. Far from pacifying him, he looked at me like I was some kind of creature from the black lagoon and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'utterly insane'. Oh well.

Armed with the knowledge that it was probably the six metric tonnes of deep-fried tortilla, poorly-cooked chicken and spicy sauce that was making me feel like I'd swallowed a lit firework, I tried to settle into bed to wait it out. Far from getting better, though, the horrible feeling in my stomach worsened until I decided to relocate my sufferings to the upstairs bathroom. With some regret, I left the warmth of my old room, pulled a fuzzy dressing gown around myself, and padded down the hall to where I knew the bathroom resided. I flicked on the light and was momentarily blinded by the bright whiteness of it all, the shiny white tiles, the white bathtub, the bright white vanity, and the mirror that reflected everything so that it looked like there was _double_ the whiteness. Ah, this bathroom had seen some times. Some drunken, vomity times. Mostly by me, but I did have a memory of having to listen to my mother empty her stomach at three in the morning one St. Patrick's Day.

I sat down cross-legged on the fuzzy white mat that lay in front of the toilet bowl and pulled my hair back, wishing I had a hair tie or something to hold it back. I wasn't vomiting yet, but when I did, I was not going to be in any mood to hold my shit together. Not that I was ever in a mood to do that, but vomiting was a special, unholy time, and it deserved the utmost fear and respect.

One thing that got me more than the horrible sick feeling was the _waiting_, because my stomach wasn't showing any signs of getting better, and despite my heavier breathing and hunching over a white bowl, it didn't seem to want to empty itself either. I knew that if I just threw up then I'd feel better, but I hated throwing up. It was _so_ disgusting, and I couldn't breathe while it was happening, and it left the ickiest taste in my mouth that I didn't want to brush my teeth over because then my toothbrush will have touched vomit and I'd have to throw it away. The waiting was so bloody annoying though. It was partway into springtime and it was still dark outside, so I'd have estimated it to be around five in the morning. Come bloody on. If I didn't throw up soon then I wouldn't be able to get any sleep when I went back to bed. Quick, think about the most disgusting things you can think of. Um… McGonagall naked. Argh! Gross! No sick though. Just a horror-filled expression taking over my face. Hagrid naked! Even grosser! Oh, that made my stomach turn over, but it didn't feel like expelling its contents just yet. What else was there that was gross? Well, there was the fact that I currently had my face in a place where people pooped. Yep, that'll do it.

Bloody hell. Mostly digested chimmy changa vomit was even grosser than pizza vomit, and that was saying something. I flushed quickly and felt the sick feeling fade slightly, but it was still there. Well, it wasn't at critical mass anymore, so I felt comfortable hunching over the sink instead of the toilet and rinsing my mouth about sixteen times. Ugh… I could still _taste_ it. The worst part about a sick taste in your mouth was recognising flavours that you'd eaten. For example, the guacamole was a very prominent player in my palate. _GROSS._ I went downstairs as fast as I could without inducing another round of shoot-partially-digested-foodstuffs-out-your-mouth. Once I'd made it into the kitchen, I pulled open the fridge and for once, didn't drink the juice straight from the carton. Sometimes, you had to relent, and when you've just vomited, that is _so_ not the time for drinking from the carton. I poured myself a glass and sipped it gingerly, letting the taste of it overcome the bitter, acidic chunder flavour.

Easter was not coming off to a very good start.

I clambered back upstairs to my room and shut the door behind me, drinking a bit more juice before setting it down on the nightstand. I felt very sorry for myself, very sorry for myself indeed as I curled up into a ball and went back to sleep, still in my dressing gown.

I was awoken in bare hours by my mother coming into my room, and without a word, opening blinds and letting the light stab me in both eyes. Didn't she _realise _that it was annoying? I groaned loudly and pulled the blankets over my head.

"I'm sick, I get to sleep in," I shouted through the blankets.

"Oh, that was you, then?" she replied mildly. "I thought it was you. Haven't heard _that_ sound in about ten years."

What was she on about? The only thing on her mind should have been allowing her horribly sick daughter to sleep more, by shutting the curtains and then leaving lots of bacon outside said daughter's door in about four hours. "Must sleep, so sick."

"Oh, now _really_, Rapha, that's no way to behave on Easter. Besides, I'm entirely certain that your sickness was a result of your borderline alcoholism."

"It was _not_," I muttered. "All I had yesterday was my post-breakfast celebratory margarita and my halfway-through-the-day celebratory fishbowl daiquiri. Besides, I was completely sober when I was throwing up."

Of course, she didn't take me seriously. Nobody ever did.


	45. Oh, Holy Unholy Terror

Home stretch now y'all. There's only about ten chapters to go, so hold onto your hats because shit? It's going to get real. Do I say that too much? Possibly. But that is just a testament to how real my shit is.

**Chapter Forty-Five: Oh, Holy Unholy Terror**

That very afternoon, after consuming my body weight in Easter chocolate while watching _extremely_ trashy daytime TV, I got another bloody attack of the sicks. This one came at around two in the afternoon, just when the show where the fat people beat up their relatives was ending and the show where the middle-aged women talk about breasts and sex and similar things that middle-aged women shouldn't talk about was just beginning. I couldn't say I was surprised, my gut reaction to that stupid show was quite like my mental one. It was entirely vomit-worthy, and those silly women were just lucky that I didn't throw up all over the TV. This time, though, I used the downstairs bathroom, which was decked out in a more subtle eggshell blue colour. Unfortunately, it had the side-effect of being heard by my mother as she did laundry in the next room. She came into the bathroom, where all that chocolate was literally going down the drain, making me tear up. That was such a bloody waste. All my Easter chocolate, given to me by the _Easter goddamn bunny_, already eaten and then thrown up. It was a sad sight.

My mother knelt next to me and assisted with the hair-holding back. Once this was over, I'd spend all my damned time with my hair tied back until I stopped throwing up for good.

"Oh, Rapha," she said to me in a patronising sort of way as she smoothed the shorter bits of my hair back. "You still haven't been paying attention to your periods, have you?"

"_Yes_, I have, obviously," I said sullenly, as I let myself droop over the stupid toilet. Well, I hadn't, _obviously_, but there was no need to let her think she was right about something. But still, just because I hadn't been paying attention didn't mean that they hadn't happened. I knew for a fact that whenever _that_ happened, I'd get so irritable that Severus would refuse to acknowledge my presence until I started acting like a rational human being. Which I never did, so I'd always end up throwing bits of balled-up paper at him until he snapped and yelled at me. Then I'd tell him that I'd always thought he was awful and he annoyed me so much that I was just going to run away to Denmark to sell drugs and get into knife fights with pimps. Then he'd glare at me before going to see McGonagall about 'timetable issues', which was code for 'getting away from this crazy woman'. That had been happening, hadn't it? … Hadn't it?

"Mu-uum," I whined angrily, like a bloody teenager, for Merlin's sake. "You've bloody gone and jinxed me again, you utter… you jinxer."

I heard a sigh from behind me. "The test we did at Christmas must have been wrong," she said, and I could tell that she was barely hiding her excitement. She pulled up the bottom of my pyjama top and practically squealed in delight. "Haven't you noticed your _stomach_, you clueless girl?"

"My what?" I said, confused. "Oh, I guess. Have you _seen_ Dad though? I figured beer bellies ran in the family." My mother laughed in an overly excited, girlish way, and bounced up and down in her kneeling state, clapping her hands. "Don't get too excited," I muttered darkly. "I've probably pickled the damn thing, do you know how much I've _drunk_ since this stupid thing was put in me?"

"Oh, pish posh," my mother said. What the hell? Since when did she say things like that? "Have you thought of names yet?"

I glared. No, in the ten seconds since you squealed this revelation to me, I hadn't exactly written up a list. "It will know itself as 'Shut the hell up and get Mama another beer'." That succeeded in making my mother look equal parts amused and horror-struck, and she bustled off, presumably to squeal the news to my father and probably the entire neighbourhood. I sighed. This was one hell of an Easter.

When I emerged from the bathroom, still in my pyjamas, I was nearly bowled over with hugs from my mother. Merlin, what was the deal with that?

"Seriously Mum," I said, trying to fight her off. "It's going to have about six legs, I bet. You're really underestimating how much I drink."

"So we'll raise it as a beetle," my father said, coming into the living room with a creepily grandfatherly smile on his face. Sweet Merlin, I couldn't be around these people.

"Uh, I have to… uh, go," I said, backing away towards the staircase. I went into my room, lay on my side in bed, and ignored my still-churning stomach. Bloody. Hell. This shit was _happening_. Thoughts from Christmas, the images of raising this stupid child-thing as a _single parent _to a _broken home_ flew through my mind, but I couldn't think about that. I pushed the thoughts out of my head and tried valiantly to clear my mind of _everything_. That was hard, though, with my queasy belly constantly reminding me of the unholy terror that was leeching off me like a… well, like a leech. Heh, that was a good name for it. Unholy terror. No! No! Don't even think about that, like it's… _real_. I pushed away all thoughts of 'but it _is_ real', and squeezed my eyes shut. Not happening. Not happening. Not happening.

By the time my mother knocked on my door at ten the next morning to take me to the stupid god-damned bloody _doctor_ of stupidness and horrible stupid stupids, I'd had quite ample time to process the weirdly sudden news and come to the same conclusion I'd arrived at when Severus had asked me to marry him a year and some months before – I wasn't getting any younger. What the hell, let's do this shit. Sure, there'd been better reasons to have a baby. But there were probably worse ones too. I mean, Severus and I loved each other, right? And I wasn't getting knocked up on _purpose_, to try and trap him into anything, or to fix a problem. So I was probably rationalising it too much, getting overly defensive. But at least I wasn't going in the other direction and chugging four bottles of tequila then getting a burly man to kick me in the stomach. That was a good sign, wasn't it?

Merlin, it was a creepy feeling though, I thought as I sat in the passenger seat of my mother's car (we'd decided to take the car instead of apparating because of my sensitive stomach, something I was thankful for). Now that my mother had pointed it out to me, I could see the slight mound appearing right in the middle of my belly. It just seemed unnatural, wrong even, that something could be _alive_ in there. I felt like a human peapod. Bloody hell. I was going to have a god-damned _baby_. How was I ever going to get used to that?


	46. To Tell, or Not To Tell?

Yay! I really didn't want this to be like one of those stupid soap opera plots where if a character throws up they're either pregnant or bulimic. Those plots are stupid. Sometimes you just gotta throw the fuck up, right? Right.

I freely admit not knowing _anything at all_ about pregnancy, despite having heard things and read some things here and there, and taking a class in it in high school (the school was in a bit of a poor area). So when I got this idea into my head and it was still in the do I/don't I stages (and at one stage it was 'definitely not, no way, that's a fucking ridiculous idea, it could never work') I thought I'd do some reading up on it. I went to some sites but it was all flowery nonsense and even the real-life testimonies (god, it's like I'm talking about an infomercial product now, right?) were all saccharine and vomit-inducing. Anyway, white trash that I am, I was watching Oprah, and it was a show about what they _don't_ tell you about pregnancy. I was like, right on! And it had a few women talking on skype (because Oprah loves skype, and I love her, so I contact-love skype) about what it was really like. And Oprah told me about a blog by one of the women that seemed to be JUST WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR.

Anyway, that whole rambly ramble was to tell you to go to dooce dot com, if you didn't know about it. It is AMAZING, the author is the funniest woman in the known universe, and it's where I did most of my half-assed research for this little storyline. I love it a mad amount, and I think you would too. Case in point, example paragraph: "I feel really sorry for my husband, because I know he fully expects my head to start spinning all the way around and for his dead ancestors to start speaking through my mouth. All he can do is watch this terrifying metamorphosis take place, from a safe distance, preferrably behind a stain-resistant protective wall. The good news is that we're officially half-way through this whole mess, only 20 more weeks to go. The bad news is he has to spend those 20 weeks married to me, and that's hard enough when I'm not pregnant." LOVE.

Anyway that is far, far too much of this non-chapter shenanigans. Here you go, y'all. Enjoy.

**Chapter Forty-Six: To Tell, or Not To Tell?**

The doctor's visit went as well as could be expected, really. I answered his questions with variations on 'end of October, I _guess_', and 'I don't _know_', the latter being delivered with all the annoyed graces of a harassed Single Parent in a Broken Home. After my mother had told him about the borderline alcoholism that I partook in (partook? Is that a word? I don't know) since this parasite thing's conception, the doctor made the same 'pish-posh' noises that my mother had and informed us both that recent studies blah blah blah, my parasite wasn't going to be born with six legs or four arms or no ears and no, Miss Vialle, you _won't_ have to learn sign language all by yourself, and no, I'm sure your husband won't leave you, and even if he did, there's no guarantee the lack of male influence would make it grow up 'all weird'. What did doctors know anyway.

After that, I couldn't bear to stay at my parents' place with them both squealing over me and making kissy faces at my stomach. That creeped me right the fuck out, so I told them I'd be going back to Hogwarts, thank _you_, and disapparated as soon as I got my bag together. Of course, I aimed for a safe place in the dungeons, but with my apparition skills, I landed upside-down on an armchair, my bag falling on my head. Smooth. I realised after I'd turned around to the right sitting position that I'd instinctively thrust my arms down to cover my stomach. Well then, this child-rearing thing was turning out to be a snap. Just a few days into this pregnancy (well, that I knew of, we aren't counting the four bloody months that I didn't even _realise_ anything was going on) and I was doing fine.

It was then that I saw Severus looking at me queerly from the couch. Well, I hadn't exactly noticed he was there. I was too busy protecting my parasite, you know? At any rate, I just stared right back at him, trying not to look guilty. I wondered momentarily if the parasite would inherit his eyes when he began to speak and I forced myself to pay attention.

"I thought you weren't coming back until the weekend," he said quietly, setting down the book he'd been perusing. I smiled in what I hoped was a very innocent way.

"Yes, well… I just… really missed you?" I smiled even wider, and he narrowed his eyes at me. I didn't stop my manic grinning, though, so eventually he broke the eye contact and looked towards the fire. "Hope I didn't ruin any of your plans by coming back so early," I said cheerily. "You weren't going to have a sexy party with underwear models while I was gone, were you?" The thought of that sent waves of despair crashing into my mind. Not that I actually thought he'd have a sexy party with underwear models, just the realisation that I wouldn't be able to wear any pretty underwear without looking like a potbellied pig. Hot.

"That was scheduled for after you returned, actually," he said, in a dead-serious tone of voice that made me titter behind my hand. "I assumed you'd appreciate the entertainment too."

"Yay!" I cried, bouncing up and down slightly where I sat. "Do you think that me and Miranda Kerr will become best friends and do each others hair?"

"Who?" was the reply. Well, no matter. "Have fun in London, then?"

Yikes. My stomach twisted around at the mention of what I'd found out, and I made a mental note to keep a lid on that in future. I was queasy enough already. "It was… um… I should probably… if I tell you something, will you promise not to hate me?"

"That depends on what it is." Oh, bloody hell. He was going to hate me.

"I… I just found out that… that my mother's not going to be making any more quiches," I finished. So, I chickened out. _You_ try telling the most intimidating man in the world that you've been so stupid as to allow yourself to be infected with his parasite. "Until… until the summer holidays."

Severus narrowed his eyes at me. He knew I was lying, I knew it. Bless his cotton socks, though, he didn't call me out on it. Holy, holy crap, what the hell did I just say. Socks? Cotton? Bless? It was official. I _was_ my mother. Merlin, it must have been a side-effect of the parasite. It was turning me _motherly_. I hated the damn thing already.

"So…" I started, trying to change the subject. "What did you get up to in my absence?"

He shrugged, turning ever so slightly pink in the face. He was hiding something. "Nothing of interest," he said. Well, since he hadn't called out my lie, I wasn't going to call out his. We'd just stay lying to each other _forever_. Or, at least until this thing burst out of my chest and he kicked me and the thing out on our arses. Oh, bloody hell. The thought of being without Severus was enough to send tears coming at my eyes like northern bullets and I had to turn away, pretend I found the fancy set of drawers _extremely interesting_ and blink like I was bare-faced in a dust storm.

I didn't know what I was going to do, really. It was just so hard to even imagine telling him. I couldn't just _not_, though. I got the idea, as I sometimes did, of running away to Romania and starting a family of gypsies. Could I do that in a way that would guarantee Severus not come after me, but without hurting his feelings too much? No, that wasn't possible.

"Severus, I…" I started again. I had to tell him, I had to. "I have to pee." Well, I had to tell him, just some other time. And I really _did _have to pee.

"I'll alert the media," he muttered, looking at me like I was slightly mad. I stood up, thanking the god of clothes that I'd worn a fairly billowy top, and went to the bathroom, nodding curtly at Severus as I went. Yeah, this was going to suck.


	47. Secrets

Whoa man, I just saw an ad that was just a policeman staring sternly at me through my computer screen, then a warning against drink-driving. He had an amusingly flaccid hat on and it was the kind of hat that I'd laugh at but with this guy, he was so damn stern, and you would never even dream of laughing at him and his flaccid hat because you know he could own your arse in about eight different ways just from the power of being stern. I wanted to yell at him I CAN'T EVEN DRIVE, STOP LOOKING AT ME STERNLY, I AM NOT GOING TO DRINK DRIVE. PLEASE STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT.

But I couldn't because he wouldn't have heard me.

That was an ordeal.

Anyway, on with le chapteur!

**Chapter Forty-Seven: Secrets**

I woke up, cursing and yelling and in general _very_ _angry_. It was the bloody seventh time I'd gotten up in the night to pee and it was not conductive to good sleeping habits. It didn't help that I was dreaming about telling Severus that I'd gotten myself knocked up and I'd possibly missed out on the perfect way to break the news to him. Anyway, my shouting and swears didn't escape his attention, and he sat up straight immediately.

"What's happening?" he said in a very no-nonsense, crisis sort of way. It was kind of hot, actually. But I couldn't think of that at the moment, because I really needed to pee.

"I have to pee," I said dramatically, and ran off to the bathroom. I saw a figure come up and lean against the door frame, and I looked up, trying to look both innocent and affronted. "Sweet Merlin, I'm peeing. Go away. You're gross."

"Raphae-"

"I said you're gross! Go away!"

He sighed and turned around, presumably leaning against the wall on the other side of the bathroom. I heard his voice coming from that general direction, anyway. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Well, this was it. The moment. The time I had to tell him. And I was sitting on the toilet for my thirty seconds of relief from the constant need to pee. Bloody stupid parasite. "Just that I have been drinking way too much, ha ha," I said, enunciating the 'ha ha' probably more than what was necessary.

"You haven't touched a drop since you came back," he replied. I did what needed to be done in the way of bathroom things, then I went out to the main area and smiled in what I hoped was a very innocent way.

"I meant water. I've just been chugging the shit out of that stuff. Curse my weak bladder, hey?"

"Indeed," he said, looking like he was only half paying attention. That was all well and good. If he was distracted by something else, he wouldn't cotton on to my delicate condition and get angry with me for not telling him. Now, all I had to do was to distract him for the next five months, then have it culminate in a big mega distraction while I was popping out the little leech. I'd have it made. Then I'd keep it in a drawer with a silencing charm until it was old enough to go to Hogwarts itself and then everything would work out fine. Except for the part where that was the stupidest, most terrible plan in the world and I was the stupidest, most terrible girl in the world for even thinking it.

Severus was still leaning against the wall, and I was still kind of staring at him, though I wasn't really doing it on purpose. I tried to smile innocently again (sweet Merlin, if I kept this up I'd have the market cornered on innocent smiles) and pulled him in the direction of bed. We all just needed to get some sleep, and in the morning I'd pee again and maybe find a solution to my problem.

Well, I didn't find a solution to my problem when I woke up, but I did find an empty bed. It was half past seven and I was alone. Worst case scenarios flew through my head. What if Severus felt my stomach bump in the night and _knew_, and he ran away to Romania to start a family of drug-dealing pimps? Or to get into knife fights with gypsies? Bloody hell. Rational thought eventually took over, and I realised that he was probably just at breakfast. My head was killing me, though. I felt like I'd come down with a terrible flu. What the hell? I thought that growing a parasite in your stomach was supposed to be all wonderful and natural and you'd look all glow-y and beautiful? My eye. I rifled through the drawer of my bedside table but found only empty packets of painkillers. Damn it! Why did I have to be hungover all the time? I made an annoyed noise and rolled over to Severus' side of the bed. I rolled the first drawer of his nightstand open and saw a folded-up piece of parchment lying there. Well, far be it from _me_ to read my husband's mail, but I distinctly recognised my mother's handwriting, and anything my mother had to say to Severus she could let me in on. I was sure she meant it for the both of us anyway. Why would she write to him and not me? After a quick glance around to make sure I was really alone, I flicked open the letter. Oh, bloody hell. It was dated for Easter.

_Dearest Severus,_

_This is Carol Vialle, Raphaela's mother. I am writing concerning Raphaela and some of the more ridiculous ideas she has been getting into her head._

My heart leapt for joy, and for a moment I was entirely certain that my mother was only writing to let Severus know how mad I was, rather than anything… untoward.

_She is under the impression that you would instantaneously leave her, were she to fall pregnant._

Well, that wasn't really telling him, was it? I mean, that might just be a friendly mother-in-law to son-in-law chat telling him that I'd better not have my head filled with things like that anymore.

_For this reason, I do not believe that she would tell you in good time, so I have taken it upon myself. Raphaela is currently 'in a delicate condition', as they used to say. I am telling you this with faith that she is mistaken and you would not leave her after finding this out._

_I implore you to not be angry with her for not telling you. She would not keep it from you out of malice, this I am certain. She simply does not want, and I quote, 'to have to raise this stupid little leech thing as a single parent of a broken home, and have it grow up all weird because it never had a male influence'._

_Sincerely._

_Carol_

Fuck.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Merlin, he'd left me. He _knew_, and he'd left me. He was probably in Romania right now, practising his knife skills against the smaller, sicker members of the gypsy clans. Bloody hell. He was gone. Forever.

Before I could let out every single fluid from my body out my eyes so I never had to bloody well pee again, I heard footsteps outside and I quickly chucked the letter back in the drawer and shut it before Severus entered. Oh, wow. He hadn't left me forever to start a family of drug-dealing pimps in Romania. I smiled broadly at him, and he narrowed his eyes at me.

"You're up to something," he stated. I was _not_. He'd put ideas into my head, though. Since he clearly wasn't leaving, and I could dance around in my underpants to _that_ happy fact later, I could concentrate on what was really important: he _knew_ and he didn't tell me. He just left me to writhe around in my own fear for days on end. What a horrifically mean man.

"You know what would be great right now?" I said, swinging my legs around in bed and standing up on the stone floor. "To get absolutely blind drunk." No reasonable person would allow a pregnant woman to drink, right? No matter what that doctor said about alcohol studies and the minimal real risks. Severus didn't know about that, did he?

Ha! His face flickered to alarm for a moment before regaining composure. "It's eight in the morning," he said quickly.

"You're right," I said, looking like I was thinking it over. I wandered over to the writing desk and picked up a decanter of something dark. "So, two shot glasses, or is this a party for one?"

"You're not drinking this early," he said, a superior grin on his face. He _still_ wasn't letting on that he knew. Merlin, this man was stubborn. I poured out a shot.

"I think I am," I said, taking it in my hand and air-toasting.

"No, you're not," he said, quite a bit more loudly. He moved closer to me and stared me right in the eyes. I stared straight back at him, daring him to stop me. I raised the glass higher, and had it almost at mouth-level when he snatched it away from me, getting quite a bit of it on his sleeve. "You can't drink!" he cried.

"You knew, you _bastard!_" I cried right back. "And you left me to freak out that you'd leave me to start a family of pimps and drug-deal to knife-fighting gypsies!"

He glared at me, wide-eyed. "One, I have no idea what you're talking about. Two, I was waiting for you to tell me of your own accord," he said quietly. "Something I see would have never happened, had you not found me out."

"It would've happened eventually," I said defensively. "Maybe if the silencing charm wore off the drawer…"

"What?"

"…Nothing."


	48. Conversation

Naww, can I just say that I LOVE y'all who've been reviewing. Y'all are so sweet, seriously.

**Chapter Forty-Eight: Conversation**

I soon found out that talking to Severus about the state of my uterus was a lot like talking to that stupid annoying doctor. He asked a lot of annoying questions that I just answered 'I don't _know'_ to, in a loud, arm-flailing sort of way, as I reclined on the couch and he sat poker-backed in a chair. Ah, good times. This child would be born into an extremely loving environment, where its parents were constantly annoyed with each other. Eventually Severus got sick of asking me unanswerable questions and just sighed, staring at me with narrowed eyes. What on earth was he glaring at _me_ for? It was his stupid fault anyway.

"Oh, go and run away to Denmark already," I snapped. He looked bewildered. "You've got to get ahead in your family of drug-dealing gypsies, don't you?"

"Tell me something," he started, and I felt my stomach do a teeny tiny little flip-flop. He was going to get angry with me, I knew it. "What exactly are you talking about?"

"You know as well as I do that I don't even know," I seethed. "How am I supposed to know anyway, with this stupid thing in my stupid stomach? It's probably extended its tentacles up to my brain to mess with my head and make me think weird things."

"I doubt tentacles are involved," he said mildly. "Unless you've been having a torrid affair with a cephalopod."

I glared at him. "_I don't know what that means,_" I said through a clenched jaw. He raised an eyebrow.

"May I see?"

I super-powered my glare. What was I, a carnival attraction? "It's bloody well half yours anyway," I replied, pulling my top up. He narrowed his eyes and looked at me.

"And how did you not _realise_?"

"Shutup," I said, turning my head away jerkily in a very sullen sort of a way. "You know how oblivious I am. How did _you_ not realise?" He shrugged. "And you're not going to leave me?"

"Never." I smiled in a goofy sort of way that seemed to spread itself through my whole body. I made efforts to keep the smile from my stomach-parts, though. This little whatever didn't do anything that made me smile, it wasn't about to reap the rewards. "You want this, then?"

"I guess," I said. "I mean, you know, right? It's like, okay, sure. Yeah?"

"Merlin, she's made up a new language," Severus muttered to himself, loud enough for me to hear. I let out a laugh, and this time I allowed the embryo foetus thing to reap _some_ of the rewards. Well, I wasn't an entirely bad mother.

"So when are we leaving this dungeon thing?" I asked. He looked confused. Well, I wasn't about to have a baby in a bloody _dungeon_, for Merlin's sake. It'd grow up all weird or something.

"Leaving?" he echoed. "What exactly is wrong with here?"

I let out a high-pitched eep-ing noise. "_I will not have my baby in a dungeon!_" I squealed. Bloody hell, I was having a baby. In a dungeon. Lovely. Anyway, Severus was looking at me like I was insane and possibly dangerous. Which, by all accounts, I was. "It's all dark and cold and stone-ey down here. And I don't know if anyone's told you this, but _it's a bloody dungeon_."

"It's liveable," was his reply.

"It's a _dungeon_," I repeated. "My foetus is going to get pre-natal blacklung, and it's going to have to hang out with the other unfortunates in the blacklung support group, instead of other children."

"One does not get blacklung from dungeons."

"I _know_. You get it from mining or something. Does this mean that you _want_ our baby to get ostracised by the other children for having blacklung? Why would you even say that? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"It's… nothing," he replied. "You said…" he started, and stared at me for a while, as if I would just _get_ it. I didn't. "You know."

"Going to have to enlighten me," I said, bewildered. He looked pained, like he had just stuck his finger into a pencil sharpener but didn't want me to know that he'd done something as stupid as stick his finger in a pencil sharpener.

"Our baby," he choked out eventually.

"Well, it's certainly not Hagrid's," was my reply. Swish! Score one for me.

"You know what I mean," he said, glaring. "It's one thing to be aware of its presence, it's quite another to hear it said like _that_."

"Romania's still open if you want to go over there and knife-fight pimps."

"How very tempting," he said dryly. "Pass."

"Yay!" I said, stumbling my way over to him to deliver intense amounts of hugs and transform that chair into a two-seater. Well, three, if you counted the leech. But I didn't. When my stomach started needing icky maternity wear, then I would count the thing inside it as a real person. Then when it came out of me I'd hand it the bill and make it give me a written apology for forcing me into clothes that hideous. Yeah, there was no way this kid wouldn't end up completely disturbed.


	49. Unpleasantness

I'll say it again, y'all are SO SWEET. And yeah, I'd love to keep writin' Raph but HOLY COW THERE IS ACTUALLY NOTHING LEFT TO WRITE ABOUT. I'll probably shoot a few oneshots your way though, so keep an eye out. But there are only a few more chapters left here, oh no!

**Chapter Forty-Nine: Unpleasantness**

Well, I always knew this day would come, but I couldn't say I'd been looking forward to it. The day that school went back after the Easter holidays and I was expected to do _work_ again. Work _sucked_. Even if you were doing something you loved, the very concept of work made it inherently unlovable. Like liquorice, really. You could cover it with chocolate and call it a bullet, but in the end, once you bit into that motherfucker and realised you'd been tricked into eating _aniseed_ there was no going back. Every single one of those bullets was going to be stomped. What was I talking about? Oh, the first day back. Right. I really needed to do something about my concentration.

Anyway, I awoke the morning of the first day back with a headache, as usual. If this foetus didn't start exuding morphine I'd have to threaten it with a punch. It needed to learn cause and effect young, especially in relation to domestic abuse. I was dozier than usual because Severus had been letting me sleep past six since he'd found out about the little headache-causer residing in my gut. I should have gotten pregnant months ago. OH WAIT, I DID, AND I JUST DIDN'T KNOW IT. Anyway, it was at half past eight when I was woken up, a good half hour until classes started. I asked him in a very nice manner why we didn't wake up at half eight all the time, since half an hour was _way_ more than enough time to get our shit together. He replied in an annoyed manner a simple, concise 'shutup'.

I pulled on an old pair of jeans, since the fabulous new pairs of tight jeans that I'd _only just bought, for Merlin's sake _had decided that they didn't want to do up over the bottom of my belly. With this tearful chore done, I rummaged around in the closet for a top to wear.

"Hey," I called out. "Where's my white shirt that's kinda puffy with the lacey bits around the top?"

"I don't know," was the response.

"What about my kind of green-ey top with the buttons on the sleeves that ties up under my boobies?"

"I have no idea where anything you wear is," came the reply. How incredibly unhelpful! One might even think that Severus didn't pay attention to my meticulous outfit-choosing _at all_. No, I had to banish that thought immediately. Of course he paid attention to my lovely clothes. How could he not? They were _so_ cute. Anyway, eventually I gave up on trying to find any specific top, and just wanted to find something that wouldn't stretch itself out of shape and make me look disgusting if I wore it over a parasite-riddled stomach. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

"I thought I had more tops than this," I cried in a very angst-filled way as I emerged from the closet empty-handed. "Everything I owned is designed to make me look _hideous_."

"I'm sure that's not true," was the half-interested reply. Bloody Severus! He didn't even _care_.

"It is," I protested anyway. "I don't have anything in the closet that isn't tight around… _here_." I pointed to my stomach and Severus turned and half-snorted with suppressed laughter. I glared at him and rummaged through the laundry basket. Finally, I found something that I hadn't got entirely filthy, performed a quick cleaning spell on it, and then pulled it over my head. It wasn't time for maternity wear, it wasn't. I wouldn't let it be time for maternity wear. "Let's bloody well go," I said sullenly. "I want to get this stupid day over with. And if _one kid _says _anything_ about my stupid leech thing, I will cut off his or her head and eat it while everyone else watches in horror."

"I'm sure you will," Severus muttered. We left the rooms together and wandered down the hall to the Potions classroom. The trip didn't take long, and before the little miscreant residing in my uterus had a chance to get any more horrifically swollen, we were hanging out behind the teacher's desk in the classroom. Well, I was hanging out. Severus was more just sitting there. It was bare minutes before the classroom began to fill, and in another few minutes, everyone had started their potions. Thing was, though, the fumes were starting to get to me.

"What the hell potion is this?" I asked in a very calm and rational manner. So calm and rational, in fact, that several students stopped to stare.

"You announced it four minutes ago," Severus replied. I knew that look. That was the 'you've just said something completely stupid but if I call you out on it you're going to kick me' look. "They're making a sleeplessness potion."

"Coffee? Ha!" I cried, relishing my own joke. "I'm good. I should write for movies."

"For what?"

"Shutup. Anyway, why does everything stink really bad today?" I wondered, fanning myself with a book.

"…It seems normal to me."

"No, it's different," I said. "And it's not doing anything good for my stomach, I can tell you that right now. I feel like I'm going to throw up in a cauldron."

"I wish you wouldn't."

"Well I might," I threatened. The heat was starting to get to me too. It really was far too hot in that fiery dungeon. It was like living in hell, for Merlin's sake. And since when was hell regarded as a proper place to cultivate a foetus? Never, that's when. "Do you really not smell that? Everything's so strong."

Severus shrugged, eyebrows raised. "Normal."

"Normal my eye," I muttered, standing up. "I have to go and lie on a bathroom floor for a while, and drown in my own vomit. Say goodbye to your lady and your embryo, you won't see us alive again."

He glared. "Amusing." I screwed up my nose at him to indicate that yes it _was_ amusing, and he didn't know anything about anything, and walked out of the classroom. Once I was free from the oppressive heat and stench of that horrific room, I felt somewhat better, but still figured that the bathroom floor was the best option. I take back what I said at Christmas. It was _not_ a charmed life for the possibly pregnant of the world. It sucked.


	50. Regarding Romania

I have never written anything with fifty chapters before. I've never even written anything with thirty chapters. This is a huge milestone for me. JOIN ME IN CELEBRATING IT, WON'T YOU.

And y'all are reeeeeally making me want to keep writing this stuff. IF ONLY I COULD THINK OF SOME MORE STUFF. ;_;

**Chapter Fifty: Regarding Romania**

Well, I'd made it. I was back from my little shopping expedition with Lucindy. Oh, how I longed for the days when our shopping expeditions involved trying on shoes and getting post-sale celebratory martinis. This time, though, it was simply a hunt for something that would a) fit over my stupid giant stomach, and b) not be pink, ruffly, or flowery. I just did not need that kind of foetus-covering. If I got something like that, then the thing would pop out of me wanting to listen to trashy pop music and wear belly tops that said 'baby girl' in sequins. Wait, was that what would happen, or was I just going mad? Probably the latter, knowing me.

I eventually arrived back with the conquests of my expedition, which happened to be just enough clothing to make it through to the next laundry day and not a thing more. I was _so_ not about to start buying _more_ of these things. One maroon tent that turned me into a circle from shoulders to hips was quite enough. I dumped my bags unceremoniously on the bed and looked around, trying to find someone to impress with the good job I'd done shopping. Unfortunately, the place was deserted. I made a loud, disgruntled noise at the fact that I had absolutely nobody to show off to, then it turned to a small squeal of joy when Severus emerged from the next room, looking confused.

"What are you making that weird sound for?" he asked. I shrugged.

"I got _stuff_!" I yelled happily. He nodded, looking like he didn't really care. Well, phooey to him. He was going to sit through my telling him all about every single thing I'd bought. Actually, that'd probably be torture for the both of us. Maybe I'd let him off the hook this one time.

"Successful, then?"

"Completely," I said proudly. "You married a girl who is capable of getting things done. The kind of things that need to be got done, I get them done."

"I am immeasurably overjoyed."

"Shutup. And I didn't yell at _anyone_ for trying to touch my stomach," I said, even more proudly. It wasn't that I was abrasive, really, I just didn't appreciate perfect strangers coming up to me, cooing, then lunging for my belly as if it was a strawberry sundae. My body was _not_ for cooing and touching by people I didn't even know. And the same could be said for most of the people I _did_ know.

"You didn't?" he asked. "How on earth did you manage that? I distinctly remember you calling one of the seventh-years a stupid cow who should have been sent to the slaughterhouse at birth, for doing just that."

"Well, I had self-control," I said, beaming. "I didn't yell at _anyone_."

"Really?"

"I didn't _yell_, per se."

He sighed. "What did you do to people?"

"Um… I said in a very quiet, calm, rational tone of voice, that I was going to bury them alive in a vat of Marmite."

"I see."

"Then that got a bit too wordy for my liking, so I just started to hiss whenever they came too close."

"You hissed."

"Like a cat."

"I know what hissing is."

"Just making sure."

Severus glared while I smiled. It was just like old times, really. But something really had to be done about this dungeon thing. In the month or so that had elapsed since I'd said something about leaving the dungeons in a very screechy way, nothing had been done. And I'd never noticed it before, but dungeons smelled, when you got right down to it. And it was impossible for anything to get dry down there. I mean, you come in from the rain and chuck your jacket on the back of a chair, it'd start to smell before it got anywhere near dry. It was just not conductive to good foetus-growing. And if there was one thing I was good at, it was foetus-growing.

"Right," I said, putting my hands on my hips. "I'm taking my stuff up to my old place a few floors up. Unless you want me to bitch and moan to everyone who'll listen about having to raise this child as a Single Parent in a Broken Home, you'll come with me."

"Noted," was the reply. I didn't know if that was a yes or a no, but if he was calling my bluff, I wasn't going to chicken out. I put a whole bunch of my awesome stuff in one of those suitcases with rolly wheels, and when that was done, I smirked triumphantly.

"You're not going to let a pregnant woman do heavy lifting, are you?" I said. If there was a way out of dragging this thing up Merlin knows how many storeys, I would do everything in my power to make it happen.

"The thing's got rolly wheels. You'll be fine," he said, leaning against the back of a chair to watch me with some interest. Damn. My one weakness: unassailable logic. That didn't mean I wasn't going to _try_ to assail it, though.

"The wheels are broken. They've got a flat tyre."

"They are not."

"Um… I love you?"

"I'm not carrying that for you."

"I hate you," I seethed, but he simply nodded in a way that showed just how much he believed me. I.e., not very much. Lovely. "I'm just going to go to Romania and have this baby there. And they don't even have hospitals or anything there, so it's going to be all unsafe and I'll die from complications and they'll send this baby thing in the post back to you because they don't know that babies can't be sent in the post, and you'll have to open a package with a baby in it that's squealing and it'll die because it _needs_ me but I'm dead. That's what's going to happen."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Have you ever been to Romania?"

"I have not."

"What exactly do you know about Romania?"

"I know that it is called Romania."

He didn't say anything at that. He was probably blown away by my intense smartness and whatnot. My geographical knowledge was second to none. To none! And even if I was a little sketchy on the details of Romania, things such as exchange rates and soil types, I still knew a bloody lot. Romania began with an R. How many people do you know with smarts like that?

Not many, if any.


	51. Incoming

Aww man, it's really gettin' into the final chapters now. What is the deal with the grainy, shadowy thing that happens in horror movies? I for one like to see what is happening.

**Chapter Fifty-One: Incoming**

Merlin, I was huge. It seemed barely conceivable (no pun intended, har har) that I still had a month to go, one more month of expanding like someone had cast bloody _engorgio_ on me. And for Merlin's bloody sake, I couldn't remember more than about three days in the past month where I hadn't wanted to throw up everywhere. It was bloody ridiculous. _How_ was this foetus going to get the nutrients it needed if it kept making me throw up every single stupid thing I ate? It was just poor planning on its part, really.

Bloody hell, what on earth had I gotten myself into? What had stupid bloody Severus _done_ to me? I wanted to kick him really hard, but I _couldn't_, because he was off teaching class or whatever he did while I was hanging around my old quarters, feeling sick and scarfing brownies. Medicinal brownies. I was lacking in vitamin fudge. Shutup.

I bloody well _should_ have run away to Romania when I had the chance. Now they'll never let me in because they'll think I'm a land-whale and harpoon me for medical science. Well, there was always Denmark. But then this stupid baby would probably look _just like him_ and have inherited that weird nose and I'd have to look at it every day and be reminded of him and how stupid he is. Well, that ruled out that option. I'd just have to move to Denmark anyway and leave this stupid kid in a cardboard box in the street.

While lost in thoughts of cardboard boxes and pre-natal cosmetic surgery, I saw the door handle turn out of the corner of my eye and Severus came in. He was back! I bounced over to him like a bloody kangaroo or something and hung myself off his neck like a bracelet charm. "Hi!" I cried. "Hihihi!"

"Er… hello," he said, patting me on the shoulder awkwardly. "Enjoying yourself, then?"

"Oh, not really," I said, backing away slightly. If I hung off him much longer at my current size, I'd bloody well cripple him, and then who'd take care of the kid when Mama's passed out drunk? "I'm a land whale who won't be let into Denmark _or_ Romania without a severe harpooning, and as soon as the parasite comes out of me it's going straight in the returns slot of the library."

His eyebrows furrowed. "Really?" he said in a deadpan sort of a way.

"Sure," I said cheerily. "But now you're here and things are okay again. Celebratory margaritas!"

"Not for you," he replied. I frowned.

"As soon as this thing bursts out of my chest I'm going to do shots out of the soft spot in its head."

He raised his eyebrows, and I saw his mouth twitch slightly. He was laughing on the inside, I knew it. I _knew_ he thought I was funny, no matter what he said. "Not nauseous anymore, then?"

"Yes. I am. In fact I might throw up on you."

"Be serious."

"I am. I'm just used to it. Besides, since when has feeling like five different kinds of hell stopped me from drinking?"

"I have no idea."

"Since _never_."

"Superb."

I screwed my nose up at him and went over to flop on the bed. I wished, for the millionth time, that Hogwarts didn't mess with electronic stuff so much. I could really have gone for some trashy daytime TV. Hell, I'd even settle for trashy prime-time. _Anything_. But no, I had to just _sit _there, staring at the blank space on the wall where I imagined there to be a TV. Unfortunately, my imagination failed me, and I spent four minutes staring at a stone wall for naught. Well, not really for naught. It had the added benefit of Severus staring at me like I was some kind of mental girl who stared at walls for fun. So… there was that.

"I'm _bored_," I said, or rather yelled, flinging my arms up in the air. "There's nothing to bloody well do around here. This place _sucks_. I wish I was back at Lucindy's. She's got about four trillion zombie movies. Then again, blood and gore probably isn't what I need right now, what with this thing's exit route."

"Charming," he replied, still looking at me oddly. I turned my head sharply to the right to stare out of the window. July was just beginning, which meant that everything on the grounds would have been all green and colourful. Unfortunately, I could only see the sky through that window, and I didn't feel like going over there to have a proper look. I'd stared out that window for about an hour that morning while eating jam. Weird, really, that I didn't remember what the view was like.

"We're out of jam, by the way," I muttered. "And I'm still bored."

"Is this what I'm going to have to put up with all summer?" he asked testily, leaning against the wall by the door. Well, he was getting his snark in early, it had only been the summer break for about fourteen minutes. And I don't care what people said about British summers, it was _hot_. I was only in a horrifically large circus tent of a tank top and the shorts I'd gone to sleep in, but I was still melting onto the bedcovers. Add that to the feeling of nausea and the incredible uncomfortableness inherent in having a mess of limbs kicking around your organs, and my suffering was _intense_.

"Oh yes," I said icily. Unfortunately, my icy tone didn't do anything to cool me down. Har har. "I've been vomiting for the past eight months, I can stand up for maybe twenty minutes at a time, I _still_ have to pee non-stop, and this bloody octopus has lodged a tentacle in my ribcage. But no, this must be _so_ difficult for you." He just glared at me. "Don't give me that look, you put this stupid thing in me."

He raised an eyebrow. "Lovely," he said. "Excuse me. I have to go… away." And with that, he turned and left the room like he was on fire. Great, now I'd scared him off with my lunacy and my baby would grow up all weird because it never had a male influence. Bloody babies. What were they good for anyway? I mean, the whole regenerating the human race thing, I know, but I was pretty sure my genes didn't _really_ need to be passed on anyway. And did Severus', for that matter? The world didn't really need _more_ cranky old bats in it. Well, no matter. One thing was for sure, in a month's time there'd be a bloody _kid_ hanging around me, glaring and saying things like 'ten points from Gryffindor' and then drifting off into space with a weird glazed-over look. Yeah, this was going to be manageable.


	52. Planning and Organisation

Hey y'all! Thanks for the sweet reviews. And Anna those videos almost made me pee my pants. That Monty Python sketch was both awesome and the kind of stuff Raph would make up. Anyway there's only two more chapters after this one, HORRORZ!

**Chapter Fifty-Two: Planning and Organisation**

Well, it was a few weeks into the summer holidays and lo and behold, I'd gotten _even bigger_. It seemed weird, unnatural even, for such a giant stomach to be residing on a (relatively) small frame. And sweet Merlin, it was creepy. I had to hand it to Severus, though. He was dealing with it better than I thought he would. To be fair, I thought he'd chuck me and find someone who wasn't Very Angry A Lot, but he actually just ignored me when I turned into Bitch Supreme. Quite an effective tactic, really. And we had synchronised anxiety attacks when we realised that in a few weeks we'd have a _god damned baby, holy crap, what the fuck is going on here_. My mother, of course, was owling me daily to find out if I'd gone into labour yet. Apparently she had me like, three weeks premature, and figured that it ran in the family. I wasn't really sure if it worked that way but I didn't want to question it. Hearing about my own birth wasn't really my idea of a fun time.

I'd owled Lucindy about six hundred times just to make sure that she was on call, just in case. I wasn't going to give birth to a live demon-child without my best friend there. I mean, Severus could have been on the other side of Britain for all I cared, just as long as Lucindy was with me. Well, obviously I'm exaggerating. But I really wanted her there with me. I mean, I'd helped her when she had some kind of respiratory tract infection but got drunk on absinth anyway and spent the night coughing and vomiting and weeping in horror all at once. The least she could do was to stick by me when I was squeezing a watermelon through a keyhole.

Oh, bloody hell. Another freakout was coming my way at the mention of how this thing was going to be leaving me. I was reclining on my bed, as I did every stupid day, and I clutched at the sheets, my face drooped in a terror-filled expression, and I emitted tiny, high-pitched squeaks. Severus, who was organising something in a drawer (why did he do so much organising? _Why_?) turned to me and raised his eyebrows.

"What is it this time?" he sighed. How dare he be completely calm and rational when I was practically peeing myself out of terror?

"I need to install a zipper in my stomach," I blurted out, once I'd regained the capacity for words. "There's no way it's getting out any other way. It's massive. Have you seen my stomach? It's full of a child that is probably obese. Pre-natal obesity. It's going to be taken away because we were negligent and I allowed it to have marshmallows in the womb. I knew it was a bad influence. Get it out of me before it makes me do drugs and spray-paint R-Train on the side of a building and shoplift lip gloss and form a romantic attachment to a boy named Tyrone who wears trackies and an oversized hoodie and calls me baby girl and I'll write on bus stop timetables in permanent marker that I heart him and that it's me and him for ever, with the 'for' as the number four, and probably spelled incorrectly too, and then nobody will let me teach anyone anything because of my poor spelling, and I'll be fired and I'll have to get a job as a street-walking prostitute."

"What?" was the response. Okay, so I might've said all that in a bit of a fast way, but still. He was being deliberately obtuse. I didn't feel like saying it all again, anyway. I'd have to give him the cliff-notes version.

"I'm going to be a prostitute!" I wailed, tearing up a little. "Of course, a very well-off prostitute, but _a prostitute all the same_."

"… I'm not sure I understand."

"The pre-natal marshmallows!" I said in a way that was most certainly _not_ high-pitched and whiny. "The _influence_. It'll seep into my brain and make me do things. Things like congregating in parks and smoking behind the school."

_Why_ wasn't he understanding me? It was clear as day, really. I really couldn't see how I could make it any easier for him to understand, but he kept giving me that blank stare, like _I_ was the mad one. I wasn't the mad one. Suddenly, a sharp pain throbbed across my lower back and I gasped.

"Whoa, that was trippy," I said. "This baby thing is doing things to me."

"What?" he said again, though he looked less bewildered and more concerned. Well, as concerned as he got, which seemed to be on a par with 'will this stain the carpet'.

"Just something funny," I said, trying to settle back into the pillows. "Probably nothing."

"Are you sure?" he said sharply. He looked a bit annoyed with me, actually. What was _that_ for? It wasn't my fault. The pain stopped suddenly and I relaxed.

"Yeah, totally. I'm fine now. It was just a weird thing. I've probably been sitting funny. Or this squid thing's decided that it needs to kick out some vertebrae and land Mama in a wheelchair."

"Charming," he said, and went back to organising that stupid drawer, though I could see him glancing at me every few moments. It made me smile, though I had to do it surreptitiously. If he knew I knew he was doing it, he'd stop. I tried to savour the silence as best I could. I mean, bloody hell, there'd be a baby thing hanging off me soon. I'd never get a moment's peace. A few minutes later, the pain shot through me again. That was weird. I was probably still just sitting funny though. I sat up as straight as I could, given my condition, and pressed my hands to my lower back. Before I knew what was going on, Severus was standing in front of me like a very intimidating pillar.

"What's happening?" he asked.

"Nothing," I muttered. "Just sitting funny…"

"You're not," he said.

"We're not going to the bloody hospital after two stupid weird things," I said, narrowing my eyes and trying my best to look authoritative. I probably failed miserably. The pain ended suddenly, and I smiled. "It's gone now."

"One more time," he said, glaring. I tried my best to sneer at him but he'd already turned away and was organising that drawer like it owed him money. Wait, that was a really weird simile. What was wrong with me? Eventually, the drawer could take no more organising, and he slammed it shut just as another wave of pain throbbed through me. I bit my lip so that he wouldn't notice and _force_ me to go to a hospital when I didn't even need to, and stayed as still as I possibly could. It wasn't that hard, really. I mean, I'd had worse pain. This was like, on par with the time I got drunk and fell through a pane of glass, but it wasn't as bad as the morning after that. Now _that_ was pain.

I just had to stare at one of the bedposts and try to not think about it too much. Luckily, Severus was still hunched over that desk, now organising a cupboard. We'd have the neatest place in all the land, at this rate, and I made the decision to not go to the hospital until everything was tidy. That was good planning. If this thing wanted to come out of me before then, well, I'd just hold it in like pee at a music festival. It was a very good plan. I managed to hide the pain the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth times, and even the ninth time when he was staring straight at me. Now _that_ was good acting. I should have been in movies.

I glanced at the clock. It was about half past four in the afternoon, three and a half hours since I'd gotten that first weird pain thing. I probably should have gone to the hospital, even if only to prove Severus wrong, but that desk looked _so _clean. A wave of pain overcame me again and I clenched my jaw shut, trying to breathe. In and out, in and out. Unfortunately, I let out the tiniest of whimpers, and _someone_'s head snapped around to glare at me.

"We're going," he said, like it was just _final_. Well, it wasn't. I could bloody well stay wherever I wanted. I stood up to argue with him and possibly kick him for being such a butthead, but it turned out that I stood up at the wrong time (or the right time, I mean, I saved my bed) and my water broke all over the nice carpet. I swore loudly.

"Bloody hell," I shouted towards my stomach. "Hold on a minute!" I looked at Severus and nodded beatifically. "Now I think I'd be okay with going to the hospital."

He just glared at me and grabbed me by the elbow as if to disapparate. I wrenched it out of his grasp and waddled over to the doorway. "No way, if I disapparate this thing will get squeezed out of me like I'm a tube of toothpaste, and then we'll be brushing our teeth with babies."

"I'm thoroughly convinced that you don't know what you're talking about," was the response. He followed me over to the door, presumably to prevent any escaping to Romania. "Besides, if we go by broom you'll either fall off, or you'll drop that thing onto some poor unsuspecting woman hanging out her laundry."

"Good," I muttered. "Then at least the toothpaste situation will be avoided." I turned the handle of the door but he reached a hand past me and slammed it shut, then pushed my shoulders quite hard against the door. It was kind of hot, actually. If there hadn't been a giant baby-filled bumper between us that was indicating that it wanted its freedom, I might have jumped him right there.

"We're disapparating. _Now_."

I opened my mouth, sound temporarily unavailable to me, but didn't get the chance to say anything before a pain overcame me that was nothing like the others. This was worse than anything I'd ever experienced before in my life. This was worse than the time I'd danced for six hours in stiletto heels. This was worse than the time I'd tried to prove to everyone that I could run in stiletto heels. Same night, actually. And it was worse than the time I went to Russia without a coat and had to have my little finger amputated. It was worse than all of those things put together. I couldn't help but cry out and slide down to collapse on the floor. Severus, sighing at me for some reason, took my elbow in his hand and we disapparated.

Incidentally, I couldn't run in stiletto heels.


	53. Exit

Aww man, the penultimate chapter! Well, enjoy it!

**Chapter Fifty-Three: Exit**

I was dying. That's what this had to be. This thing inside of me was chewing its way out of me, but it didn't know which direction to go in, so it was just chewing all around. That was the only explanation. The pain had definite starts and ends, but the space between the end and the start was far smaller than the space between the start and the end. It was _so_ unfair. Why did I have to have this thing anyway? Why couldn't I have gotten someone to do it for me? I was lying on my back in the hospital bed of St. Mungo's, letting out very high-pitched whimpers that I was sure only dogs could hear. Severus was standing next to me, looking equal parts horrified and nauseous, and I wanted to kill him for doing this to me. I wanted to strangle him with my bare hands.

"Get Lucindy," I choked out in between the contractions. He looked even more horrified. "Go to her house, get her."

"To her _house_?" he replied incredulously. For fuck's sake. I didn't give two shits how much he hated her, he was going to get her for me whether he liked it or not. It was for this reason that I went completely still and glared at him, putting the highest emphasis on every single world.

"If you don't disapparate this very second and come back with Lucindy," I said, gritting my teeth against the pain. "_I will eat your soul_."

He didn't need any further encouragement. He vanished in a heartbeat, and I was left alone to writhe in agony in front of a doctor who kept looking at my nether regions and making thoughtful noises. I was _dying_, here. This was not a time for thoughtful noises.

"I'm dying," I choked out, glaring at him. He looked at me thoughtfully. "Give me a god-damned epidural or something."

"A what?" he replied. Bloody hell. I hated being a witch sometimes.

"Make this fucking pain go away or I'll hunt down your family." He continued to look at me thoughtfully, then pressed his wand to my navel. The pain suddenly vanished, and I was left feeling euphoric. That may have just been a result of the relief, or it may have been a side effect from whatever spell he'd used. Who cared? A pop rang out, and Severus and Lucindy were standing to my right. Lucindy dashed around the doctor and sat on the visitor's chair to my left, pulling it close to the bed and taking my hand in hers.

"How're you doing?" she asked, a nervous smile on her face. "Fuck me, Raphie, this shit is fucking mental."

"That is exactly how I'm doing," I said, giggling. "This is mad! I'm having a _baby_. Like, right now. Right now!" I felt very strange. A weird, kind of indescribable feeling really. The feeling of having a baby is just like the feeling of having a baby. That's the only simile I had.

"Sounds good," Lucindy said, laughing with me. "Hey, where'd he go?" Who was she talking about? The doctor? No, he was still there. Severus? Oh. Lucindy, the doctor and I were the only people in the room. Bloody hell, what was he doing now? I mean, I didn't blame him. I didn't want to see a tiny person come riding into the world on an ocean of blood and placenta. Actually, that made me want to throw up. But I didn't, because I needed my strength. Presumably. I looked up at the ceiling tiles. They were kind of ugly.

"Am I supposed to be doing something right now?" I asked the doctor. He shook his head.

"Not yet," he said in a reassuring manner. Well, he said it in a complete monotone, but it was still reassuring to know that I wasn't supposed to be doing something that I wasn't doing. I stared around the room. It was a pretty boring room.

"So," I said, turning back to Lucindy. "What have you been up to?"

"Uh," she said, clearly flustered. "Nothing as exciting as having a baby."

"Exciting? Ha!" I cried, dismissing it all in that one syllable. "Dull!" This wasn't exciting. This was barely a carnival ride. This was War and Peace, or Lord of the Rings. It was long and arduous and I always wanted to give up after about four pages. But I was kind of at the epilogue of _this_ metaphor, and I couldn't exactly just put it on the shelf and tell myself I'd try again later. This was happening.

Severus reappeared in the doorway, still looking sick and horror-struck. At least he was here, though. "And where do you think you've been?" I said, trying to look menacing. It probably didn't work. He didn't answer, he just walked over and put a hand on my head. It was kind of nice, actually. I made a mental note to be nicer to him in future, but the doctor was talking again.

"Looks like you're fully dilated," he said dully. "Time for you to start pushing."

So I pushed. I was probably really good at it, too. I was going to get a blue ribbon for first place. I'd win at pushing. Didn't really feel like much was happening down there, though. So I kept pushing. I don't know how long I did it, but I bloody well deserved that blue ribbon in pushing. It just seemed like I was straining _so_ hard and nothing was happening. It was like glaring at something for hours because you want to train yourself to be telekinetic. _Nothing. Was. Happening_. This was bloody ridiculous. Maybe I wasn't even really pregnant anyway. Maybe I'd just gotten really fat, and all this pushing was doing was popping all the blood vessels in my body. Bloody ridiculous. I was on the verge of telling the doctor that thank you, this was a very push-tastic experience, but I'd like to go home and live out my days as a fat, barren alcoholic now, when Something Happened.

Oh, Merlin. Oh, bloody hell. Whatever spell the doctor had put on me to take away my pain wasn't nearly powerful enough. I could feel awful things. Things like human heads being expelled through orifices that _clearly_ weren't designed to handle that kind of thing. Whose stupid idea was it to have _that_ as the child-exiting place? The head was the worst part, surprisingly enough. After that was through, which took a stupidly long and painful time, the rest just kind of decided to go along with it. Like, whatever. I've come this far, haven't I?

Then everything turned back to normal. I mean, I felt exhausted, but I no longer felt as if there was a foot jammed into my ribcage or anything horrid like that. I wondered what the doctor would show me. Would it be an octopus? I would find a way to love it even though it would be all tentacled and gross. And I'd finally understand the mess of flailing limbs while it was in my stomach. Would it be the spawn of Satan himself, tearing out the heart of the doctor and eating it in front of him? Considering its father, possibly. Holy balls, his father. That creepy old bat was a father. That was terrifying, nauseating, and giggle-inducing. And I was a bloody mother. That was even creepier, really. I barely felt old enough to legally drink, let alone be allowed with a small child. Yet something was being given to me, something all wrapped up in a hospital blanket. It was screaming bloody murder. I pulled my left hand out of Lucindy's stunned, vice-like grip, and used it to hold this… this _actual human being_ that I'd just _created_. I felt like I'd stumbled upon some grand secret. I wanted to run to everyone else in the hospital and shout at them all, 'hey, did you know you can make tiny versions of yourself? IT IS TRUE, I HAVE JUST DONE IT. BEHOLD.' And they'd see how smart I was for figuring it out all by myself.

And I was right, too, about this kid's face. It did kinda look like Severus. I mean, in a baby sort of way. I looked up at Severus himself, who still looked horrified and nauseated, and was staring at that little thing like it was the anti-Christ. He'd get over the horror eventually, though. I kind of had. It might have just been a side-effect of that pain relief spell though. I felt pretty good about things.

Severus replaced his hand on my head and sunk into a chair to my right. He was still staring at that tiny kid. It had stopped crying, and was staring right back at him. I laughed slightly, and Severus turned to stare at me like I'd sprouted carrots out my ears.

"This is crazy," I said breathlessly. "It doesn't make any sense." And it didn't. But that was okay. Some things didn't really need to make sense, and when a clueless, annoying girl had a baby with a horrifically abrasive pseudo-vampire, it was best to not think about it too much. So I didn't. I just stared at that tiny person that had just come out of me. It was pretty trippy.

* * *

A/N: You know what? Way back when, when I got the little inkling of an idea for this storyline and I did all that research on it to make sure I didn't mess it all up and make EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO'S EVER ACTUALLY HAD A BABY screw up their nose and sneer 'ur doin it rong', I got a shitload of research. Eleven frickin' pages of 8pt research. About half that was on caesareans and the timeline for what you can do after the surgery. For example: First week after having your caesarean, you should wear high-waisted underpants so that the scar won't be irritated. WHO KNEW. And do you know how much of that research I actually used? PRETTY MUCH NONE. And man, the post-birth research! WHAT HAPPENS WITH BABIES AFTER THEY GET SHOT OUT THE VAGOO? I KNOW. I KNOW IT ALL NOW. But NONE OF IT WILL BE USED. THIS IS THE LAST CHAPTER OF THE OFFICIAL STORY. Next chapter is the epilogue and then it's all over, baby. I sure do hope you dudes thought this story was okay.


	54. Epilogue

Man, the epilogue already! I am making faces like you would not believe. Seriously, the kind of faces I am making right now, like, you don't even know. And you won't even be able to SEE my faces because y'all are wherever the hell y'all live and I am in my house, being seen by NOBODY. I hope. Anyway the point is that you'll just have to imagine my faces. And also imagine what I look like. I'll make it a bit easier for you: I look exactly like Taylor Momsen. Ha ha, not really. IF ONLY. Anyway, enough nonsense. It's time for the END.

**Chapter Fifty-Four: Epilogue**

Severus' place down Spinner's End was always cold and dreary, but I liked it. I liked sitting by the bay window, drinking tea and watching the rain come down outside. The whole place just seemed grey. It could be depressing, sure. But then again, I'd lived in a dungeon for over a year. Depressing? Ha! This cold, rainy place was practically Disneyland. I was sitting cross-legged on the window seat, resting my arms on the windowsill and staring outside. Everything seemed blue. I was waiting for the sun to rise, for the sun to turn everything amber and breathe new life into the world. Footsteps echoed behind me but I didn't turn around. I could tell whose they were anyway.

"It's barely six," came Severus' voice from behind me. I laughed quietly.

"Surprised that I'm awake before you?" I muttered, still staring out the window. It was cold outside, I could tell. My breath was misting against the window.

"Pleasantly surprised that I didn't have to withstand your domestic abuse just for attempting to wake you up at a reasonable hour."

"Six is not a reasonable hour."

"Yet here you are."

"Shutup," I muttered. That wasn't the point, anyway. The point was that my tea was rapidly cooling. Well, it was mostly tea. I'd Irished it up a bit. But if you couldn't get squiffy before dawn now, when could you? Exactly. With that in mind, I drank the rest of it as fast as I could. Whoa, head-spin. Sweet.

Different footsteps, smaller ones, came to me from the stairway, but I still didn't turn around. A small body clambered up and imitated me, sitting cross-legged beside me and staring out the window. I remained staring though. I wouldn't break my gaze for _no-one_. If there was one thing that could be said about me, it was that I was strong-willed. Or that I was a supreme annoyance. I preferred the former. I reached my arm around the shoulders of that small body, though, as I stared out. The sun was just beginning to rise and the blue was fading from the snow.

"Next year we'll go to your grandparents' house, Lila," I muttered. Everything was a bright orange now. "The lake freezes over this time of year, you know."

"Okay," came the small voice from beside me. I turned to look at her. She'd only just turned three in August, my beautiful girl. Of course, she'd inherited the black hair that both her parents had looked _fabulous_ in. She had big black eyes that glittered like shiny beetles and kind of unnerved me, to tell the truth. And her nose had a little bendy bit, right in the middle. It seemed unnatural, wrong even, that I could've created something so amazingly perfect in every way. I had to fight to refrain from shouting at her '_you germinated in my uterus!_' since Severus had given me a talking-to about that.

I'd wanted to carry on the tradition that my mother had started. I wanted to name my child after a ninja turtle, if only to show her what a stupid idea that was. I was overruled on that count, though. Severus could really be a buzzkill. And he'd refused point-blank to name her after my best friend in the world, just because she could be a little unsavoury at times. Lucindy'd _agreed_ to stop swearing in front of the kid, what more did he want? There was no pleasing some people, really.

"You're staring," muttered Severus from somewhere that seemed quite far away. I turned and narrowed my eyes at him, somehow tearing my eyes away from the wonderful thing that _I had created, holy crap_. My daughter flitted off to do whatever it is children do. Wreak havoc, probably. Break things. Get the VCR all sticky and jam-filled. It was nice to have someone else to blame that on.

"I'm allowed," I replied, standing up to glare properly. "When you do it, you look like a serial killer. I'm the one in charge of making sure you don't scar her for life, remember?"

"Of course."

"My life-scarring is okay, though," I said. "It's allowed."

A sound like something falling over came to us from the next room and Lila's voice carried through the quiet house. "Ah, _shit_." I smiled in what I hoped was an innocent way while Severus glared at me like I'd just pooped on his hat.

"And where did she learn that?" he queried in a deceptively calm voice. I affected a very serious expression.

"I have absolutely no idea," I said. "I can assure you, it wasn't Lucindy."

"I didn't think it was," he said evenly. "She is not the only lunatic I know who swears like a fishwife."

Argh. Argh. He was onto me. Quick, change the subject. Anything. "You still haven't wished me a merry Christmas," I said, trying to look very sweet and innocent. Swish! My sweet subject change worked. His eyebrows flicked up and he drew out a rose just opening from behind his back. I was probably the dumbest person on earth for not realising he was hiding something there, but I never said I was observant. I unfurled the parchment wrapped around the stem.

_Raphaela,_

_Always._

_Love._

I looked up and smiled at him in what I'm sure was a very goofy, unappealing way. Oh well. My smile gave way to a kind of uncontrollable giggle that sounded less like human laughter and more like someone messing around with a recorder. "You like me, you loser," I mocked, still grinning like an idiot. The corners of his mouth twitched in some semblance of a smile and that just made me grin even more goofily. I threw my arms around him. After some awkward hesitation, he drew his arms around my waist.

"I love you," I said, making all attempts to imitate a boa constrictor. One of us wouldn't get out of this alive.

"Merry Christmas, Raphaela," he replied. And it was.

* * *

A/N: And so marks the end of the absolute longest thing I have ever written in my entire life. Appreciate it, bitches.


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